Actor Amitabh Bachchan.
| Photo Credit: Getty Images
Veteran filmmaker Chandra Barot, best known for directing the 1978 Amitabh Bachchan-starrer Don, passed away on Sunday (July 20, 2025) due to cardiac arrest at a hospital in Mumbai, his family said. He was 86.
After the announcement of Barot’s passing, tributes poured in from several Bollywood personalities, including megastar Amitabh Bachchan, who described the filmmaker as his “dear dear friend”.
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Barot was battling ‘Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis’ (IPF-fibrosis of lungs) for the last 11 years and had been receiving treatment at the Guru Nanak Hospital, as per his family. Chandra Barot is survived by his wife and a son.
In a heartfelt note, Bachchan said he was deeply saddened by the passing of his close friend Barot.
“Another and another sad moment .. Dear dear friend and my director of DON – Chandra Barot passed away this morning.
“It is difficult to put in words the loss. We worked together, yes, but he was more a family friend than any else ..I can only pray,” the 82-year-old actor wrote on his blog.
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Before making his directorial debut with Don, Barot served as an assistant director to actor-director Manoj Kumar in Purab Aur Pachhim, Roti Kapada Aur Makaan, Yaadgaar, and Shor.
After Don, Chandra Barot directed a Bengali film – Aashrita (1989).
Released in May 1978, Don, featuring Amitabh Bachchan in a double role – that of a mafioso and a simpleton – went on to become a blockbuster with its racy music, iconic dialogues and pulsating action.
One of the most celebrated films of Chandra Barot’s career, Don had its fair share of ups and downs.
On the 40th anniversary of the movie in 2018, Chandra Barot in an interview with PTI shared an interesting insight that he, along with his friends Amitabh Bachchan, Zeenat Aman and Pran – all three who featured in “Don” – decided to make the film to pull one of their producer friends, Nariman Irani, out of debt.
“Bawa’s (Irani) wife was a hairdresser and knew writer Salim Khan. We asked her to put in a word for us. When we met Salim, he didn’t have a script ready but told us, ‘There is one subject which no one understands’.
“We said, ‘we don’t care, we just want ‘Salim-Javed’ written on the posters’. It was a ready script and we took it immediately. It didn’t even have a title. Everyone in the industry called it ‘Don waali script‘ (A script about a don),” Chandra Barot had recalled.
Sadly, Irani passed away six months before the release of Don, he added. The filmmaker also revealed that many big stars in the industry, including Dharmendra, Jeetendra and Dev Anand, had refused the movie, which was one of the highest-grossing Indian films of 1978.
Don was turned into a franchise by filmmaker Farhan Akhtar, son of Javed Akhtar, who had written the original script of the movie along with Salim Khan.
Film industry colleagues took to social media to mourn Chandra Barot’s death, remembering him as a wonderful filmmaker who made one of the most entertaining Hindi movies – Don.
Published – July 21, 2025 08:54 am IST