The film’s hero, unable to pay for his role, performed for free; it went on to win five National Awards and become a cult classic

Actors who have performed in films without receiving payment for their work range from Shah Rukh Khan, who did not charge for his cameo in Brahmastra, to Deepika Padukone, who did her first film Om Shanti Om for free. Shahid Kapoor, who performed for free in the 2014 crime film Haider, is another addition to this list.

Haider, the third film in the Shakespearean trilogy after Maqbool and Omkara, was directed by Vishal Bhardwaj, who transformed the tragedy Hamlet by William Shakespeare into the backdrop of Kashmir. The main cast of the movie, which was set in the insurgency-ravaged Kashmir in the 1990s, included Shahid Kapoor, Tabu, Kay Kay Menon, Irrfan Khan, Aamir Bashir, and Shraddha Kapoor.

Shahid explained why he worked on Haider for free in a 2023 interview with Film Companion, saying, “They couldn’t afford me.” They said that since the movie dealt with a highly experimental issue, the budget wouldn’t be approved if they had to compensate me. They had no idea whether it would succeed at all, but I thought it would be a really appealing product to create, so I agreed to build it for free.” The actor won his first and only Filmfare Award for Best Actor to date after receiving a ton of praise from both critics and fans for his depiction of the main character.

The 2014 release was one of the most highly praised movies of the previous ten years and went on to become a cult classic. Haider won five National Film Awards: Vishal Bhardwaj for Best Screenplay and Best Music Direction; Sukhwinder Singh for Best Male Playback Singer; Sudesh Adhana for Best Choreography; and Dolly Ahluwalia for Best Costume Design.

After the 2009 action movie Kaminey, in which Shahid portrayed two roles, the actor and director worked together again on Haider. Their third picture together, Rangoon, was a box office disaster and was not well received by critics.