The Age of Bollywood Stars

Celebrities do all kinds of things to deal with age-based crises: they buy stuff like mansions on lakes in Europe. Or massive handbags that could comfortably fit several babies from sub-Saharan Africa. Sometimes they act out and get their hair cut in funny ways. Or they may embark on a journey of self-actualization. Actors, I suspect, mostly deal with this crisis by acting half their age in movies. I'm still haunted by images of a portly 30 year old Rishi Kapoor tucking a book under his arm and attending classes in a college.

In this age of Bollywood stars, Govinda, 50, acted in a movie last year called Naughty @ 40. He was not nominated for any awards. A year before that Priyanka Chopra, then 28, played a college hottie in Pyaar Impossible. Audiences stayed away and critics rolled their eyes.

Long ago on the Drift, we cataloged the age of Bollywood stars. That post badly needs updating. For one, all the actors have grown older! But some have fallen off the list - mostly because they acted in one flop too many or in the case of women, because they got married. Some hot new stars  (Prateik Babbar, Sonakshi Sinha) have been added to the list. Some new success stories (Randeep Hooda, Ayushmann Khurrana, Kajal Agarwal, Ileana D'cruz, Yami Gautam) were penciled in. There have been some comebacks (Sridevi). I added important actors I overlooked in the last round (Paresh Rawal, Boman Irani, Irrfan Khan, Chitrangada Singh, Kalki Koechlin). For good measure and for no particular reason, I threw in names like Sunny Leone and Esha Gupta.


I restricted this list to actors who have played the lead in at least one major recent production and had some measure of fame. I racked my brain to think of as many as I could to include on this list. I may have missed some - feel free to pull me up for that.

FIRST, THE MEN

	Amitabh Bachchan October 11, 1942 70
	Naseeruddin Shah July 20, 1950 62
	Paresh Rawal May 30, 1950 62
	Govinda December 21, 1958 53
	Sanjay Dutt July 2, 1959 53
	Boman Irani December 2, 1959 52
	Anil Kapoor December 24, 1959 52
	Irrfan Khan November 30, 1962 49
	Aamir Khan March 14, 1965 47
	Shahrukh Khan November 2, 1965 46
	Salman Khan December 27, 1965 46
	Ajay Devgn April 2, 1967 45
	Akshay Kumar September 9, 1967 45
	Saif Ali Khan August 16, 1970 42
	Madhavan June 1, 1970 42
	John Abraham December 17, 1972 39
	Arjun Rampal November 26, 1972 39
	Hrithik Roshan January 10, 1974 38
	Farhan Akhtar January 9, 1974 38
	Akshaye Khanna March 28, 1975 37
	Abhay Deol March 15, 1976 36
	Abhishek Bachchan February 5, 1976 36
	Vivek Oberoi September 3, 1976 36
	Tusshar Kapoor June 21, 1976 36
	Randeep Hooda August 20, 1976 36
	Shreyas Talpade January 27, 1976 36
	Emraan Hashmi March 24, 1979 33
	Riteish Deshmukh December 17, 1978 33
	Sharman Joshi March 17, 1979 33
	Ali Zafar May 18, 1980 32
	Shahid Kapoor February 25, 1981 31
	Neil Nitin Mukesh January 15, 1982 30
	Ranbir Kapoor September 28, 1982 30
	Imraan Khan January 13, 1983 29
	Ayushmann Khurrana September 14, 1984 28
	Prateik Babbar November 28, 1986 25

NEXT, THE WOMEN

	Sridevi August 13, 1963 49
	Madhuri Dixit May 15, 1967 45
	Tabu November 4, 1970 41
	Malaika Arora August 23, 1973 39
	Aishwarya Rai November 1, 1973 38
	Kajol August 5, 1974 38
	Preity Zinta January 31, 1975 37
	Chitrangada Singh March 28, 1976 36
	Kareena Kapoor September 21, 1977 35
	Rani Mukherjee March 21, 1978 34
	Vidya Balan January 1, 1978 34
	Lara Dutta April 16, 1978 34
	Bipasha Basu January 7, 1979 33
	Soha Ali Khan October 4, 1978 33
	Konkana Sen Sharma December 3, 1979 32
	Nargis Fakhri October 20, 1979 32
	Amrita Rao June 17, 1981 31
	Sunny Leone May 13, 1981 31
	Mallika Sherwat October 24, 1981 30 Although most people think she is at least 35-36!
	Priyanka Chopra July 18, 1982 30
	Dia Mirza December 9, 1981 30
	Kalki Koechlin January 9, 1983 29
	Katrina Kaif July 16, 1984 28
	Sonam Kapoor June 9, 1985 27
	Kajal Agarwal June 19, 1985 27
	Jacqueline Fernandez June 2, 1985 27
	Asin October 26, 1985 26
	Deepika Padukone January 5, 1986 26
	Shruti Haasan January 28, 1986 26
	Kangana Ranaut March 23, 1987 25
	Genelia D'Souza August 5, 1987 25
	Sonakshi Sinha June 2, 1987 25
	Yami Gautam November 28, 1986 25
	Ileana D'cruz November 1, 1987 24
	Anushka Sharma May 1, 1988 24
	Parineeti Chopra May 12, 1988 24
	Prachi Desai September 12, 1988 24
	Esha Gupta November 28, 1988 23
	Amy Jackson January 31, 1991 21