Sanjay Leela Bhansali gets emotional recalling early life with 'violent, alcoholic' father: 'He never whipped us but...'

Bollywood's ace filmmaker Sanjay Leela Bhansali has had a successful career making films but his personal life, behind the scenes, has been equally turbulent since childhood. Sanjay Leela Bhansali's father Navin Bhansali was a film producer who never found success so he turned to alcohol for relief. This led him to become violent and negligent towards his family. Sanjay Leela Bhansali once, during a chat on Rendezvous with Simi Garewal, revealed how his father's struggle with alcoholism led to his mom taking primary charge of the house.  

"There were financial problems, and things started deteriorating, and he took solace in alcohol. Ever since I was born, I saw him drink. We saw a lot of violence growing up. We only saw anguish and bitterness against life growing up," Sanjay Leela Bhansali said. 

The Padamaavat director further mentioned how his father was a 'violent man'. "He never whipped us, but that’s how we felt as kids. He was a broken man. I had seen him sitting with his drink at 4:30 in the morning and talking to his dog," he said. 

Sanjay Leela Bhansali also recalled his father's death, stating, "He died of cirrhosis. My mother and him didn’t get along, but in the dying moment, he came out of the state of coma and stretched out his hand to my mother. It was one moment of reaching out and holding, and he was gone. I realized my mother sacrificed 22 years of her life for this one moment."

In an earlier interview, the filmmaker had once revealed that Shah Rukh Khan's Devdas was influenced by his father’s alcohol addiction.

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