This Friday marks Madhuri Dixit's birthday. One of Hindi cinema's most endearing (and enduring) heroines, Madhuri turns 59 as of today. Her peak years came in the period from the late 1980s to the 1990s, when she did films such as Tezaab, Ram Lakhan, Khalnayak, Hum Aapke Hain Koun..!, Koyla, and Dil To Pagal Hai.
Director Sooraj Barjatya's Hum Aapke Hain Koun..!, in particular, ran for more than 200 days in the cinema halls and became 1994's highest-grossing Hindi film.
Madhuri once spoke about the 1994 film, co-starring Salman Khan, Anupam Kher, Mohnish Bahl, Satish Shah, Alok Nath, and Renuka Shahane, among others. In a conversation with CNN News18, Rajeev Masand asked Madhuri Dixit if she was paid more for the film as compared to Salman Khan.
In her response, Madhuri said that she did not know whether she received a greater payment for it in comparison. "I do not know if I was paid more or less or whatever. I just knew that it was a beautiful film." The actor also said that it was always "a battle" for her to make a space for herself in "a patriarchal and male-oriented" industry and that it gave her more joy "than anything else" when writers valued her as an actor.
Madhuri also reminisced about listening to the screenplay narration by Sooraj Barjatya that lasted 3.5 hours and included the filmmaker singing the tracks in the film for the actor. "When Sooraj ji narrated the script to me, I couldn't believe that this was the same boy I had seen during Abodh, my first film." Madhuri said that Sooraj served as a crew member on Abodh, where he helped ensure continuity in character and scene elements. The actor added that she did not realise how prominent a part of the team Sooraj was during Abodh as she would understand during the making of Hum Aapke Hain Koun..! "To see that boy then, and then he made such a beautiful film," she recalled.
