Salim Khan

Biography

Salim Abdul Rashid Khan (born on 24 November 1935) is an Indian actor, film producer, and screenwriter. He wrote the screenplays, stories, and scripts for numerous Bollywood films. Khan is one half of the prolific screenwriting duo of Salim–Javed, along with Javed Akhtar.

The duo were among the first Indian screenwriters to achieve star status in Hindi cinema and became the most successful Indian screenwriters of all time. While working together, Salim Khan was largely responsible for developing the stories and characters, whereas Javed Akhtar was largely responsible for developing the dialogues.

Salim-Javed revolutionized Indian cinema in the 1970s, transforming and reinventing the Bollywood formula, pioneering the Bollywood blockbuster format, and pioneering genres such as the masala film and the Dacoit Western. Salim Khan was also one of the responsible people for creating the "angry young man" character archetype of Amitabh Bachchan.

Their films are among the highest-grossing Indian films of all time, including Sholay (1975), the highest-grossing Indian film ever at the time, as well as films such as Seeta Aur Geeta (1972), Zanjeer (1973), Deewaar (1975), Kranti (1981), and the Don franchise. Sholay is also considered to be one of the greatest Indian films of all time.

Khan is also known as the founder of the Salim Khan family, as the father of three Bollywood actors, Salman Khan (one of the big three Khans of Bollywood), Sohail Khan, and Arbaaz Khan, and film producer Alvira Khan Agnihotri.

He is married to Sushila Charak (a.k.a. Salma Khan) and to actress Helen Richardson Khan. Salim Khan won six Filmfare Awards as part of Salim-Javed, and he was later awarded the Padma Shri in 2014.

Khan is married to two women. His first marriage was to Salma Khan (born Sushila Charak), a Hindu, on 18 November 1964. Both of Charak's parents were Hindu: while her father, Baldev Singh Charak, hailed from Jammu, her mother was Maharashtrian.

khan and Salma have four children together; three sons, Salman, Arbaaz, and Sohail, and one daughter, Alvira. In 1981, Khan married actress Helen Richardson, a Christian whose father was Anglo-Indian and mother was Burmese. Some years later, they adopted a girl named Arpita, the daughter of a homeless woman who died on a Mumbai footpath.

Khan's eldest son, Salman, is one of the most commercially successful actors in Indian cinema. His other two sons, Arbaaz and Sohail, are also actors and film producers.

His elder daughter Alvira is married to former actor and film-maker Atul Agnihotri, while his younger daughter Arpita is married to Aayush Sharma, grandson of Sukh Ram, a former Minister of Himachal Pradesh and long-time member of the Congress party. The couple had their first child, a boy, on 30 March 2016.

His son, Salman Khan, describes him as a big fan of Kazi Nazrul Islam and is said to have read most of his poems.