Do you know that the horror movie Mahal (1949) grew out of an eerie experience actor Ashok Kumar had during an overnight stay at a resort?

That a nervous Yusuf Khan learnt of his screen name Dilip Kumar only from the promotions of his debut film?

Or that first-time Director Aditya Chopra had to fool Shah Rukh Khan into agreeing to a story narration by telling him that DDLJ (1995) was actually an action film!

An actor lives a hundred lives. He takes on the persona of a stranger and becomes him. He wakes up every morning, wears a different face and sets out to make the world his stage. And in this journey from real to reel, the man behind the screen idol often remains unknown, except to a chosen few. This book attempts to go beneath the pancake and the paint, beyond the glam and the glory, to bring to the reader the human behind the celluloid persona.

Peppered with anecdotes and candid interviews with some of the Indian Cinema’s most iconic stars, Matinee Men is an unmatched story of Bollywood as seen through the world of its greatest magicians, the stars.