Children of a lesser God

“None of my achievements from Salaam Bombay! are of any use,” laments Shafiq Sheikh, whose breakthrough performance in that film had won him a National Film Award in 1989. To make ends meet, he drives an auto rickshaw on the streets of Bangalore and does small film roles that fetch him a few thousand rupees.

Shafiq, a street kid, took a ticketless train ride to Mumbai, auditioned by chance, and won a role in the film beating 129 other contestants and turned into a child celebrity overnight after the release of the film. That instant high and the hopeless future that has stared at him since, has broken him and he’s attempted to end his life many times. Saved only to be pushed back into his reality of nothingness.

Stories of struggle

In Behind the Big Screen, Journalists Sunanda Mehta and Suchitra Iyer, use their matter of fact writing skills to uncover the real journeys of the child actors who once shone at the box office. The tales of their struggles with parental control, their highs, the dramatic falls to ignominy, their heartbreaks, their loss of innocence and the constant pressure to survive in the rough and tumble of the film industry are documented well.

From Daisy Irani’s tale of her harrowing past as a child artist, of being raped at the age of six to the rise of Junior Mehmood, who used his chutzpah and some help from Mehmood to earn his place in the glitzy world of films, the book highlights the harsh realities of being a child actor.

In the 90s, the ad filmmaker Dilip Ghosh’s documentary, Aadhi haqeekat, Aadha Fasana (English: Children of the Silver Screen) had illustrated some of these stories. Child actor Baby Naazhad talked of how she became the only source of income for her family, at the age of eight. The Cannes award for her role in Raj Kapoor’s Boot Polish, the accompanying fame and the fortune made her family depend on her as a breadwinner, so much that she doesn’t remember living her childhood.In many ways, the book extends such conversations.

Meena Kumari and Madhubala lived torturous personal lives even as they gracefully transitioned from child actors to adult superstars. A quick chapter details the ones who were fortunate – Sridevi, Urmila Matondkar, Kamal Hassan, Aamir Khan and Hrithik Roshan.

Khushbu, the daughter of the TV mechanic, used to accompany him to Hema Malini’s house whenever he went to repair TVs. Eventually, she broke into the film industry as a child artiste in films Hema was starring in and with further patronage from Sunil Dutt and Boney Kapoor, got more films. Protesting her father’s control of her life,she shifted base to the south and became an iconic superstar in Tamil cinema with even a temple dedicated to her.

Finance control

Unlike Khushbu, who walked away, Sarika, fought a bitter battle to get control of her finances from her father, just like MacCauley Culkin, the precocious kid from Home Alone who had to fight a case in court to get some of his earnings back. Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson from the Harry Potter films survived this fate as a trust held their millions in earnings until they turned eighteen.

Sachin Pilgaonkar, who did 65 films as a child actor, survived by remarkably reinventing himself from acting, to editing and direction, to theatre, to producing television and streaming shows and who, even at 69 still manages to keep himself engaged.

The book chronicles the fate of the four child actors of Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire as they faded from dizzy spotlights into oblivion. The youngest of them, Rubina,who catapulted from a canvas and tin roofed house in a Dharavi slum to a plush hotel in Los Angeles for a red carpet at the Oscars, with selfies with Brad Pitt and Daniel Craig, realized that life’s not fair. Back home, she had to fight her stepmother who threw her out of her house that had been bought for her by Boyle’s initiative.

Then she had to go into hiding to avoid media reports that accused her father of attempting to sell her off to a Sheikh in Dubai, and finally using the money given by a trust set up by Boyle, attempted to rebuild her life by launching a salon.

A psychologist shares her perspective on the toll on child actors from the grueling work schedules, the much time spent with adults, the exposure to scenarios beyond their understanding, the lack of education and effects of tasting stardom and rejection at a very young age.

Each of the tales is well researched and matter of fact, without judgement on either the industry or the families that pushed their children into the business.

It’s a thought provoking collection of stories of the emotional cost children pay to grow up on the big screen.

The reviewer runs 91 Film Studios that produces feature films in Indian regional languages.

Check out this book on Amazon

Published on March 15, 2026