Salim-Javed

Salim-Javed are a legendary Indian scriptwriting duo who collaborated on more than 20 films, including the landmark movies Sholay (1975; “Embers”) and Deewaar (1975; “Wall”). They achieved a level of stardom and influence in Bollywood that no other writers have. Salim-Javed are:

• Salim Khan (born November 24, 1935, Indore, Central India Agency [now in Madhya Pradesh], India)
• Javed Akhtar (born January 17, 1945, Gwalior, Central India Agency [now in Madhya Pradesh])

Early lives and careers

Khan moved to Bombay (now Mumbai) from Indore in about 1960 and acted in about 16 films. By the late 1960s he had transferred his interest from acting to writing and scripted Do Bhai (1969; “Two Brothers”), under his stage name, Prince Salim.

Akhtar’s father, Jan Nisar Akhtar, grandfather, Muzter Khairabadi, and uncle Majaz were well-regarded Urdu poets. Javed Akhtar moved to Bombay in 1964 and was hired to write dialogue for Yakeen (1969; “Belief”) and other, mostly unsuccessful or minor, films.

Collaboration and first films

Khan and Akhtar met during the filming of Sarhadi Lutera (1966), one of Khan’s last acting jobs. They formed a friendship as well as a writing partnership that came to be known professionally as Salim-Javed, with Khan developing the plot and Akhtar supplying the dialogue. Their first films were released in 1971—Adhikar (“Right”), Andaz (“Style”), and Haathi Mera Saathi (“O Elephant, My Friend”). The latter two starred Rajesh Khanna, the superstar of the time.

Their first big success was Seeta Aur Geeta (1973), a comedy predicated on the lost-and-found formula, which is a favorite Bollywood plot device involving characters who are separated, often in childhood, and later reunited. It was the first assembly of a cast and crew with whom Salim-Javed would collaborate on many films, including Sholay: director Ramesh Sippy, actress Hema Malini (in the dual title roles of Seeta and Geeta), and actors Dharmendra and Sanjeev Kumar.

Angry young man and the age of Amitabh Bachchan

Salim-Javed’s prime spanned the mid-1970s to the early 1980s, a period of political turbulence in India, which had been at war with Pakistan in 1971 and endured the Emergency (June 1975–March 1977) imposed by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s government. Salim-Javed’s writing reflected the socioeconomic realities of the time—rising prices, unemployment, food scarcity, an increase in organized crime, and the growth of slums in cities such as Mumbai. A new kind of antiestablishment hero, the “angry young man,” emerged in their films. Preoccupied with justice and revenge, the angry young man was emblematic of the social discontent of the time.

While Salim-Javed’s early successes were with actors Khanna and Dharmendra, it was Amitabh Bachchan who brought the angry young man to life, his brooding screen presence perfectly capturing a contained fury that was unleashed in films such as Zanjeer (1973; “Shackles”). The angry young man was at his angriest in the seminal Deewaar, in which he becomes a smuggler after growing up poor and is eventually killed by his brother, whom he had helped to become a police officer. Bachchan starred in 11 of Salim-Javed’s roughly two dozen films (and played a character named Vijay in 8).

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Sholay

The landmark Sholay marked the apotheosis of both Bachchan and Salim-Javed. Bachchan and Dharmendra play Jai and Veeru, respectively, two guns-for-hire who embark on an extrajudicial quest to bring the dreaded bandit Gabbar Singh to justice. Sholay opened to empty theaters in its first weekend. With characteristic confidence, however, Salim-Javed ran a full page advertisement in a trade journal declaring that the film would earn 1 crore rupees (about $114,000 in 2025 dollars) in each business territory; Sholay eventually collected twice or thrice as much. In the several years after its initial release, Sholay collected 30 crore rupees (more than $350 million in 2025 dollars) and held the record for top-grossing Hindi film for 19 years.

Style and legacy

Like the angry young man, Salim-Javed, too, held authorities to account—they demanded and received due recognition in an industry that had traditionally undervalued the role of writers. At the height of their celebrity, they commanded higher salaries than the actors in their films. Visibility was a hard won prize—the battle for acknowledgment began when Salim-Javed hired a painter to add their names to the posters for Zanjeer that had already gone up. In the 2024 docuseries Angry Young Men, Salim Khan said:

We had written the complete script of Zanjeer. But when the posters were put up, our names were nowhere to be seen. A script is the most important thing in filmmaking. Yet, writers were not valued and sometimes, not even credited.

Salim-Javed’s brand of cinema was thematically diverse: they wrote social commentary (Deewaar; Trishul [1978; “Trident”]), crime dramas (Don [1978]; Shakti [1982; “Strength”]), and genre-defying films (Sholay; Yaadon Ki Baaraat [1973]; Shaan [1980; “Grandeur”]) that are the earliest examples of the “masala” movie format (combining action, emotion, romance, and comedy).

Their films are known for evocative storytelling and emotionally charged scenes, such as the confrontation between the gangster Vijay (played by Bachchan) and his police officer brother Ravi (played by Shashi Kapoor) in Deewaar. Vijay demands to know if the upright Ravi’s wealth can compete with his own ill-gotten riches. “Mere paas maa hain” (“I have our mother”), Ravi replies in one of Hindi cinema’s most iconic exchanges. Salim-Javed’s skill with impactful dialogue is, perhaps, best illustrated by Sholay’s Gabbar Singh, whose one-liners have become part of popular culture.

Salim-Javed’s screenplays were remarkable for their depiction of women. While female characters were rarely crucial to the plot (except Seeta Aur Geeta, which centered on the female lead), they had agency, dignity, and, very often, careers. Hema Malini played several empowered women in Salim-Javed’s films, such as the horse-and-cart driver (a traditionally male profession) Basanti in Sholay. Female characters, such as Deewar’s Anita (a sex worker who becomes pregnant out of wedlock), often refused to conform to convention.

Solo careers

Salim Khan and Javed Akhtar ended their partnership without warning or apparent cause sometime in the mid-1980s, though Mr. India (1987) was made from a script they had written. They continued working separately: Khan wrote some 15 films after the split, including Naam (1986; “Name”). Akhtar’s solo credits include the films Betaab (1983; “Restless”) and Saagar (1985; “Sea”). His career as a lyricist flourished with films such as 1942: A Love Story (1994) and Lagaan (2001; “Tax”).

Families

Both Khan and Akhtar are patriarchs of influential film families. Khan married twice, the second time in 1981 to actress and dancer Helen. His eldest son is the superstar Salman Khan; his other sons, Arbaaz Khan and Sohail Khan, also acted but with less success. Akhtar married actress and writer Honey Irani in 1972; their daughter, Zoya Akhtar, and son, Farhan Akhtar, are noted filmmakers, and Farhan is also an actor. Javed Akhtar and Irani divorced in the 1980s, and he married noted actress Shabana Azmi in 1984.