Sridevi in Himmatwala (1983)

Sridevi on the sets of Himmatwala

Sridevi in Himmatwala (1983). There's a new version being made by Sajid Khan, director of wildly successful but critically butchered films. He says he's going to launch the Sridevi of 2012... er. Unlikely. Sridevi's Sridevi Sajid. Often imitated rarely recreated!

We found this great quote from Sridevi, when she spoke about working on the original film, "After the failure of Solva Saal (co-starring Amol Palekar) when I was doing Himmatwala, to be honest, I was not at all interested. Matlab [I mean], I was like 'Solva Saal is a disaster, now I can never make it in Hindi cinema! In fact, when Jeetuji agreed to work with me, I was shocked that he had agreed to work with a flop heroine.

Though my character in Himmatwala is of a very loud and proud girl, I was unusually quiet on the sets. For one, I was not confident of my making it big. Two, there were all these heavy-weights like Amjad Khanji, Kader Khanji, Shakti Kapoor. Jeetuji, who I had to do scenes with (during Solva Saal, the whole unit had been from the south itself). My feeling was like... Jo pehle din school main bachhi jaati hai na [Like a girl's first day in school], like that. Once or twice Jeetuji even asked me, "Aren't you interested in working in Hindi films? Why are you so quiet?" What could I tell him? When within days of its release I came to know that the film is a super duper hit, I just couldn't believe it."