A Conversation With Avtar Gill

Pooja sits down with the ever-unassuming yet endlessly fascinating Avtar Gill—a man who insists he’s “ordinary” despite a career spanning 350 films. In this episode, filled with sardonic humour and candid reflections, Avtar looks back at the quiet strength of his truck driver father, jokes about being labelled Mahesh Bhatt’s third wife, and reflects on the lessons he has absorbed from greats like Dilip Kumar, Pran and Hrishikesh Mukherjee.Along the way, he regales Pooja with stories—of the time Rishi Kapoor pranked him at midnight by pretending to be Steven Spielberg, why Sanjay Dutt pushed for a Sadak remake, when he wrote his own dialogues in Rangeela and the time he witnessed Mithun Chakraborty eat rice and salt water in a hotel suite in Malaysia.Avtar also reveals how he has managed to look the same for decades, why he calls himself an also-ran, why he has no ego in asking for work and how, despite nearly five decades of work in the industry, he remains a labourer at heart.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.