Cops, cameos & crowd-pleasers: Thalaivar’s crossover to Bollywood

Rajinikanth may be primarily celebrated as a Tamil cinema icon, but he has also carved a space for himself in Bollywood and appeared in a string of Hindi titles in the ’80s and early ’90s. His first Hindi outing, Andhaa Kaanoon (1983), featured him as the leading man and had cameos from two screen giants — Amitabh Bachchan and Dharmendra.Though Thalaivar’s role in the 1985 action drama Geraftaar might just be a cameo, the film stands out for being the only instance when Amitabh, Kamal Haasan and Rajini acted together. During that phase, when multi-starrers were thriving, he acted with Rajesh Khanna in Bewafai , Shatrughan Sinha in Asli Naqli , Jeetendra and Rishi Kapoor in Dosti Dushmani , and a then child artiste Hrithik Roshan in Bhagwaan Dada .Over the years, he acted alongside some of Hindi cinema’s biggest names, including Aamir Khan, Jackie Shroff, Mithun Chakraborty, Sunny Deol, Sanjay Dutt, and Anil Kapoor. His last Bollywood appearance was in Shah Rukh Khan’s Ra. One (2011), in which he made a cameo as his Enthiran character, Chitti, the robot.