3 min readNew DelhiMay 15, 2026 04:46 PM IST
Saif Ali Khan, for a large part of his career, was known as the ‘metro-sexual’ hero who often played romantic roles set in urban areas. Of course, he broke the clutter with films like Omkara, but regardless, a lot of filmmakers were wary of casting him in certain kinds of roles, and one such film was Parineeta. In a recent interview, Saif shared that producer Vidhu Vinod Chopra was not very keen in casting him in Parineeta as he believed that he did not have “that pain” that was required to play that role.
In a chat with SHOWSHA, Saif described Vinod as an “amazingly encouraging” person and said, “He was making Parineeta and he said that he wanted to cast somebody else. He gave me a story about how that person’s (the other actor that he wanted to cast) career hadn’t worked out the way he wanted it to so he has pain and you don’t have that pain. So he thought he was better.”
Saif laughed and recalled, “So I said, ‘Since when is failure a prerequisite to getting a role?’ We had a bit of a joke about that.” He added, “I tried to convince him to give me a shot at playing Shekhar because he thought I am a bit more ‘rom-com’. The example of the actor he wanted to cast was that his career has not worked out the way he wanted.”
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Before the film’s release in 2004, Vinod had shared with Telegraph India that Saif had initially met him for another role. “As for Saif, it has been a revelation. When he came to the office he was slated to do another role. He just said, ‘I can do Shekhar’. And I saw the rushes and he has truly done an incredible job,” he said.
Saif is still quite proud of the work he did in Parineeta. In a 2025 chat with The Times of India, he recalled that playing Shekhar was a “challenge since he wasn’t the usual romantic hero that I was used to playing.” He added, “That gave me a chance to step into a more nuanced space as an actor and I found that deeply rewarding, it was a more classic role, based on Sarat Chandra’s novel. It is that one performance where I channelled the class of a tiger and played it like that… I love my work in that film.”
Parineeta, directed by Pradeep Sarkar, also starred Vidya Balan and Sanjay Dutt.
