3 minutes of readingNew DelhiJanuary 29, 2026 05:01 pm IST
Rajesh Khanna was a superstar when he married 16-year-old Dimple Kapadia in 1973. The star was 31 years old and Dimple was still a teenager and controlling the world around her. She married one of the country’s top stars even before the release of her first film, but since he banned her from working in movies, Dimple’s career ended before it even began. Nine years after their marriage, Dimple left Rajesh’s house with her two daughters and restarted her career. By all indications, their marriage was a disaster. Rajesh’s volatile behavior, declining stardom, drinking and his many alliances outside his marriage caused many problems and in a later interview, Dimple described this as a “traumatic” period in her life.
In a 1994 interview with Pritish Nandy, Dimple said that their personalities were quite different and that she was too young to understand what was happening “I think we were two very different types of people. And I was probably too young to understand what was happening to this man who was a superstar. I mean, I’ve never been able to understand stars and their behavior patterns because I’m not one of them. It’s very difficult for me… I couldn’t understand it. I just couldn’t understand it,” she said. When asked if this period was “traumatic,” Dimple simply said, “Yes, it was.”
Rajesh, in a 1990 talk with Movie magazine, shared that he once ended up in the terrace of his house at 3 am in a drunken state. “One after another, seven films in a row had just failed. It was raining, it was pitch black and, alone on my terrace, I lost control. I screamed. ‘Parvardigar, hum garibon ka itna sakt imtihan na le ki hum tere vajood ko inkar kar de (God, don’t test my patience to the point of questioning your very existence.)” Of course, Dimple and my staff came running, thinking I had gone crazy. “It was because success affected me so much that I couldn’t handle failure,” he said.
After Dimple and Rajesh broke up, she started working in films again and he, for a short time, was in a relationship with his co-star Tina Munim. Rajesh and Dimple were separated for a while but did not divorce. In 1994, when Dimple was asked if He planned to marry againshe seemed hopeful. “Yes, I would. I don’t know how I could adapt because I’m so used to being my own person, but of course, I would love to get married again,” she said.
Rajesh and Dimple remained married until his death in 2012.