the Akshay going Amitabh way!

His choice of leading ladies is getting younger…

Krishnan M :

The film heroes in South Indian cinema had no qualms about cradle-snatching. When N. T. Rama Rao, the No. 1 Telugu cinema actor and also the erstwhile Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh, serenaded Sridevi in Vetagadu (1979), Sr NTR was close to 56 years of age, and Sri was a teenager, just 16.

There are countless May-December romances in mainstream Indian cinema. Frankly, it is not even a ‘thing’ to get uptight or upset about. When a hero is popular, girls of all shapes, sizes, and ages willingly flock to romance him on screen. Most of them even have their mothers’ blessings.

But this big age-gap phenomenon is not typical of South Indian movies only. In Hindi cinema too, the best and the biggest heroes have romanced girls nearly half their age. And this will remain an ongoing situation.

There’s an adage that goes that a man is only as old as the woman he ‘dates’. Typically, men on and off screen have often preferred younger arm candy. A scribe from the ’90s remembers that when Amitabh Bachchan was romantically paired with Manisha Koirala (29) and Shilpa Shetty (24) in K. C. Bokadia’s Lal Badshah (1999), one of his favourite heroines, who seemed envious, commented, “Amit’s choice of girls is getting younger.” Adding, “At the rate he is going, he may even team up with Baby Guddu (a child artiste).”

The heroine also commented, “Next, ‘he’ will be learning to change nappies,” because the girls he is romancing on screen are nubile. This turned out to be a prophecy because Amitabh did play a 60-year-old photographer who was infatuated with a teenage Jiah Khan in Ram Gopal Varma’s Nishabd (2007).

Why these older heroes chasing younger heroines are in focus today is because 58-year-old Akshay Kumar, one of today’s leading superstars, is often romancing girls, if not half his age, at least somewhere there.

For example, check this out. In Welcome to the Jungle, his love interest is the dishy, curvaceous 34-year-old Disha Patani. Before that, in Bhoot Bangla (2006), he was serenading the light-eyed Punjabi girl, 33-year-old Wamiqa Gabbi. In Sarfira (2024), he was married to 29-year-old Radhika Madan, who, despite being sari-clad, still looked a tad too young. In Toilet: Ek Prem Katha (2017), he was married to 28-year-old Bhumi Pednekar. One can find a long list of young, younger, and youngest girls in his heroine collection, but the point is made. BTW, he made a dhamakedaar pair with 32-year-old Kriti Sanon in Bachchhan Paandey (2022). And they were paired in Housefull 4 (2019), when she was in her twenties.

Akshay is in august company. Salman Khan came in for sharp criticism when he paired with Rashmika Mandanna in Sikandar (2025). SK was in his 60th year when the film released, and his heroine was 29. The nice thing is Salman took the jibes about the age gap most sportingly. When a pesky press reporter asked him about the 31-year age gap, he replied, “When the heroine doesn’t have a problem, and when her father doesn’t have a problem, why do you have a problem?”

As far as cinema goes, this younger woman-older man syndrome always has its own brand of charm and magic. One of the best films to prove this is R. Balki’s Cheeni Kum (2007), where a 

65-year-old chef, Bachchan, romanced a haughty Tabu, who was thirty years younger than him.

Love is in the eyes of the beholder, on or off screen. Detractors be damned!