Veteran actor Ranjeet recently opened up about his image as one of the most iconic villains during the 1970s. The 79-year-old actor is quite active on social media and has worked in over 350 films. The yesteryear actor, whose name was Gopal Bedi, was rechristened to Ranjeet due to professionalism.
Though he played mostly positive character roles in TV series, he recently opened up about how he was known as the “rape specialist” in Bollywood due to his on-screen roles. He shared that he played the role of a rapist in most of his films. Talking about his image, he said that in those days no one listened to the story before signing a film.
Similarly, he did not interfere with anyone’s scripts and didn’t feel the need to as he didn’t have a problem playing the villain. However, his family was quite mad at him but eventually, they realised it was just his job.
Talking to ETimes, Ranjeet said, “I never planned my career; just moulded myself into whatever came my way. I went out of my way to make my heroines comfortable, so much so, that after a while even when I was not a part of the film, but there was a rape scene, they would tell the filmmaker to call me. They started calling me the rape specialist.”
Ranjeet said that his career started by chance as he moved to Mumbai and met Sunil Dutt, Raj Kapoor and almost all the famous personalities of the industry at that time. He shared that because a director told him that his first film was shelving, he decided to return back home to Delhi.
However, just before leaving he met Sunil Dutt with a friend who wanted to work in a production house. He realised that Dutt was actually “angry” with him because he was “trying to get in touch” with Ranjeet for a role. After he met Dutt, Ranjeet bagged the film Reshma Aur Shera. But soon after playing a brother in his initial films, he started playing the Bollywood baddie who molested women.
“The next day, Mohan Saigal called me asking if I’d want to do a small role in his film ‘Sawan Bhaadon’, I said I would. That’s how I started my career–playing a brother in two back-to-back releases, but fir poori zindagi main ladkiyon ke kapde kheenchte reh gaya (for the rest of my life, I kept playing a baddie who molested women),” he said.
