Dharmendra tied the knot with Hema Malini despite being already married to Prakash Kaur.
Dharmendra once had objections to Hema Malini posing with other male heroes.
Hema Malini and Dharmendra have “an unconventional marriage,” according to the veteran actress, who fell in love with the Sholay star while he was already married to Prakash Kaur. Hema Malini has time and again spoken out about how she maintains a respectable distance from Dharmendra’s “other family” as she doesn’t want to disturb them. In one of her joint interviews with Stardust magazine in 1976, when the rumours about their alleged relationship were rife, the Sholay acror of Bollywood had shared that he had objections towards her posing with other actors.
For the unversed, the two legendary stars lived opposite each other and whenever Dharmendra would come and visit Hema Malini every morning, he would fight with her. She shared, “We start each day with a fight. We are fighting all the time. It is he who normally gives in and then we make up. Early in the morning when he comes to see me, he asks, ‘why do you have a long face today and why are you spoiling my mood early in the morning?’ As if I can help it, I am born with a face like this. Then we fight.”
In the same interview, Dharmendra expressed, ” I object to certain… poses… with the other heroes, you know.” Responding to him, Hema Malini had said, “As if I can’t object! So many times I have caught him in all kinds of pictures with all kinds of people. And he said, ‘It was only for the picture, there was nothing real in it’.”
The conversation that took place four years before their marriage also had quotes of Hema Malini calling Dharmendra her ‘favourite’ person ever. Even Dharmendra had said,”I am scared of what will happen to me if we ever part.” To this, Hema Malini had promptly replied,”I will never let anyone break this. From my side, at least, it is forever.”
Although Hema Malini found happiness in her “unconventional marriage” with Dharmendra, her parents initially disapproved of their relationship because Dharmendra’s was already married to Prakash Kaur. Despite not divorcing Prakash, Dharmendra and Hema have been married for 43 years, and she has no complaints about their life together. Dharmendra currently resides with his first wife and their family.
In a recent interview with Lehren, Hema Malini opened up about her equation with her actor-husband and why she lives away from him. “Nobody wants to be like that, it happens. Automatically, what happens, you have to accept. Otherwise, nobody will feel like they want to live their life like this. No! Every woman wants to have a husband, children, like a normal family. But somewhere, it went out of the way,” the actress-turned-politician said.
