Updated On: 23 November, 2025 06:53 PM IST | Mumbai | mid-day online correspondent
Shefali Shah, currently earning praise for Delhi Crime Season 3, reflected on her career in a recent interview. She revealed that playing Akshay Kumar’s mother in the 2005 film Waqt: The Race Against Time became a professional setback, despite her insistence on taking the role

Shefali Shah
Shefali Shah, a Bollywood actor, is now being praised for her work in Delhi Crime Season 3. In the 2005 film Waqt: The Race Against Time, the actress played Amitabh Bachchan`s wife and Akshay Kumar`s mother, which launched her career. In a recent interview with Times Now, Shefali revealed that playing Akshay`s mother was a career setback.
Shefali said that taking up the part in Waqt came as a professional setback. She shared what her husband, the film`s director and producer, Vipul Amrutlal Shah, told her at the time. She said, “[My] husband told me, don’t do it. Amitji suggested, ‘Why don’t you take Shefali for this?’ and then he was like, ‘I don’t think she’ll fit it.’ One day, I put powder in my hair to say, ‘See, I can look older and mature.’ He was like, ‘Do not do this.’ But I was like, ‘No, no, I want to do it.’ Good, [I] dug my own grave.”