Here’s a cool thing I just stumbled across through an interview!  There’s actually a close connection between the films Fan and Sholay.

Rediff had an interview with the actress who played Neha, Shriya Pilgaonkar.  I read it, because I was interested in how someone could come off as so mature and confident and comfortable in their very first role.  Turns out, she’s an industry kid!

Her parents are actors/directors/producers in the Marathi industry, and on television.  She said she started out hanging around their sets as a kid, sometimes being used in roles like “neighbor child”.  And then she studied dance, and directing, until a friend asked her to be in a play he had written that required a trained dancer, which is when she fell in love with acting.  Before Fan, she’d been in a Marathi film directed by her father, and a French film directed by Jean Dujardin.  Isn’t that interesting?  So this was her first real role in the Hindi industry, but she’d been on camera most of her life, and she had a variety of training, from classical dancing to working in the European industry, to fall back on.

But what’s really interesting is right at the end of the interview, she mentions that she hopes she can be as good as her father, that he is most proud of being part of Sholay.  Her Dad is Sachin Pilgaonkar!  That is, “Sachin”!  The child actor who played the son of the blind man in Sholay!  He also hung out by the cameras and assisted directed a little, which is where he got his training and interest in directing.  I can even kind of see it now, if I look at their two faces next to each other.