I wasn’t a very confident dancer: Zeenat Aman

Actor Zeenat Aman says she was never a confident dancer and directors soon realised that it was better to leave her to groove rather than force her to perform complicated choreography.

In an Instagram post, Aman went down the memory lane and shared a video clip of Oh Diwano Dil Samhalo from her 1979 hit The Great Gambler with Amitabh Bachchan.

“As I’ve mentioned before, I wasn’t a very confident dancer as I never had formal training unlike most of the actresses of the time. Still, I could ‘groove’ and many a director realised it’s better to leave me to my own swaying device than frustrate themselves trying to coax complicated choreography out of me! Anyway, enjoy this snippet. P S: can you guess who sang this number,” she shared in a post.

Calling the song, which was sung by Asha Bhosle, her personal favourite, Aman said it depicted “the confidence and sass of a woman who knows her desirability”.

“Another hit from ‘The Great Gambler’! ‘Do Lafzon Ki’ was the movie’s most loved song by popular consensus, but this one is my personal favourite. None of that drippy romance stuff here. Just the confidence and sass of a woman who knows her desirability,” she wrote.

“The sequence had three outfit changes, of which the shimmering gold track-pant set (not featured in this clip but you can find it on YouTube) tickled me the most! Not only was the outfit completely over the top, the hair team decided to give me a short pageboy wig to go with, and the dance master decided to add in some high kicks for good measure,” she added.

The Shakti Samanta-directed film had R D Burman as the music director. It revolved around Bachchan’s dual role as Jai, an expert gambler working for an underworld don and Vijay, a CID inspector. Aman played Shabnam in the movie who falls for Jai.

The film also featured Neetu Singh, Prem Chopra, Utpal Dutt, Madan Puri, Helen and Iftekhar among others.