Rajesh Khanna (born Jatin Khanna, 29 December 1942 – 18 July 2012) was an enormously popular leading man in the mid-sixties to mid-seventies, generally considered to have the most insane fangirls in the business in his heyday. Although a good-looking man in the suave, dapper mold of Dev Anand, his characters usually tended to be simple, saintly souls from the countryside, preaching traditional Indian values in the face of greed, crime and corruption. He is best remembered for his frequent pairings with the bubbly actress Mumtaz, including Apna Desh and the 1971 Tear Jerker hit Anand in which his costar was fellow superstar Amitabh Bacchan, then a newcomer.
In his private life, he was a troubled, often depressive man, perhaps due to the early death of his parents.
His marriage to the very young movie starlet Dimple Kapadia (Rishi Kapoor's leading lady in Bobby) caused a minor scandal, due to her age and the fact that he had broken up with a longterm girlfriend who had helped him a lot in his earlier career.
Rajesh and Dimple had two daughters together, Twinkle and Rinke, who also had brief acting careers, until Rinke married a wealthy businessman and Twinkle married Akshay Kumar and took up interior decorating and film production. Rajesh and Dimple became estranged over Rajesh's alcoholism and womanizing, and Dimple's desire to go back to acting, but by the late nineties they were on amicable terms.
Rajesh died in 2012, bringing a huge outpouring of sympathy from his fans and colleague and is fondly remembered as Bollywood's first superstar.
