In a rare and candid conversation, ‘Aashiqui’ star Anu Aggarwal has peeled back the curtain on the glitzy world of Bollywood in the 1990s—and what she reveals paints a very different picture from the romance and glamour we usually associate with the silver screen.
Known for her breakout role in the 1990 musical hit ‘Aashiqui’, Anu Aggarwal recently spoke to Pinkvilla about the dark underbelly of the Hindi film industry back in the day.
She didn’t mince words: “It was a dirty business,” she said, adding that during her time, many films were quietly bankrolled by the underworld. “Everything was under-the-table. The industry was being run by people like Dawood Ibrahim. All the money came from there. It was an entirely different world.”
The ’90s, often celebrated for its larger-than-life heroes and dramatic storylines, had a far more sinister reality behind the camera, according to Anu. She recalled how deeply embedded the underworld was in the movie business.
Those were the days when whispered phone calls, shadowy meetings, and threats were part of the production pipeline.
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But that wasn’t the only reason Anu decided to leave it all behind. Her sudden rise to fame came with its own pressures—and some very real dangers. “I couldn’t walk alone. I couldn’t live in peace,” she shared. “There would be fans crowding under my building day and night. It got overwhelming. Luckily, I stayed in a government building where we had police protection.”
In fact, Anu says the frenzy around her was not unlike what Shah Rukh Khan experiences today. “People would fly from other countries just to see where I lived. Shah Rukh is my neighbour now, and what happens to him happened to me then. I ran away from it all,” she confessed.
After ‘Aashiqui’, Anu went on to do a few more films like ‘Ghazab Tamasha’, ‘King Uncle’, and ‘Ram Shastra’. But her last appearance on the big screen was in ‘Return of Jewel Thief’ in 1996. Just a few years later, life took a dramatic turn.
In 1999, Anu met with a horrific accident that left her in a coma for nearly a month. She eventually recovered—but never returned to films. Instead, she stepped away from the spotlight entirely, choosing a life of spirituality and social work.