Salim Khan: Salman Khan is not a character actor, he is a STAR

Veteran scriptwriter and Salman Khan's father Salim Khan is known or being brutally honest. His partnership with acclaimed writer Javed Akhtar gave Hindi cinema come best-known movies like Sholay among others.

In an interview to a news portal, Salim ji spoke at length about Tubelight's debacle, Salman's superstardom and why today's writers fail to deliver good movies.

When asked what really went wrong with Tubelight, Salim Saab said, "Tubelight was a good film, which would have done well if any other actor had starred in it, but to have an action hero like Salman getting constantly beaten up and crying all the time just didn't work with the audience. Someone like Raj Kapoor could do any role, the common man, the lover, the comedian, but Salman doesn't have that sort of an image. The audience kept expecting him to fight back and when he did retaliate a bit towards the end, the entire audience cheered for him, but it never went beyond a couple of blows. Also missing was a love story and in fact, the little you see was added later, there wasn't any initially."

Elaborating further on why they chose to compensate for the losses, he said, "The reason for compensating the distributors was that the price it had been sold at was in expectation of it making Rs 250-300 crore at the box office like most Salman films, which it didn't. If Tubelight had been sold reasonably, it would have been a hit.'

When asked if being popular as action hero limits Salman as an actor, Salim Saab said, "All over the world, leading men of stature have had images. Actors like John Wayne and Clint Eastwood have done the same roles all their life. Raj Kapoor was always a simpleton. If Tarzan wore clothes or James Bond didn't romance women, they would not be who they are."

"As for Salman, it's not as if he is a character actor so he can fit into any role. He is a star, so he has to live with his image," he added.