Saif Ali Khan Plays Visually Impaired Man In ‘Haiwaan’: Indian Stars Who Took On Similar Roles

Written By: Entertainment Desk

Sep 11, 2026 16:49 IST ⓘ

Indian stars who played visually impaired roles.

Cinema is a visual medium, but some of its most memorable performances have asked audiences to look beyond what can be seen. Playing a visually impaired person is an unusually delicate assignment: an actor has to build the character through movement, spatial awareness, sound and touch without reducing disability to helplessness, mimicry or a convenient superpower. Indian cinema has not always struck that balance perfectly, but its filmographies contain everything from intimate relationship dramas to bank-heist capers and unapologetic action entertainers built around visually impaired protagonists.

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The conversation has returned with ‘Haiwaan’, Priyadarshan's thriller that arrived in cinemas today (11 September). Saif Ali Khan plays Shyam, a visually impaired man pulled into a deadly cat-and-mouse game, while Akshay Kumar crosses over to the dark side as the film's principal antagonist. It is Saif's first film with Priyadarshan and his reunion with Akshay in 18 years, after ‘Tashan’. The film is Priyadarshan's Hindi reworking of his own Malayalam hit ‘Oppam’, although he deliberately stopped Saif from watching Mohanlal's performance. The director wanted a new interpretation, not an imitation.

Saif's Shyam now joins a long and remarkably varied line of visually impaired characters played by Indian stars. Here are 12 notable actors and performances – from quietly observed classics to larger-than-life commercial thrillers – that approached blindness in strikingly different ways.

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1. Saif Ali Khan - Haiwaan

Director: Priyadarshan

Release date: 11 September 2026

Main cast: Saif Ali Khan, Akshay Kumar, Boman Irani, Shriya Pilgaonkar, Saiyami Kher

Saif's Shyam is not written as a passenger waiting to be rescued. He is a martial artist whose hearing and other senses become crucial when he is drawn into a murder mystery, placing him opposite Akshay's murderous antagonist. That premise lets ‘Haiwaan’ move between investigation and raw action, but the more interesting challenge was differentiating Shyam from Mohanlal's Jayaraman in ‘Oppam’. Priyadarshan barred Saif from watching the Malayalam original and tailored the character's gestures, body language and dialogue delivery around him. Akshay, meanwhile, has described the role as his first completely black character – no last-minute halo waiting in the wings.

Because ‘Haiwaan’ opened on the day this article was written, it has no completed opening-day or lifetime figure yet.

2. Naseeruddin Shah - Sparsh

Director: Sai Paranjpye

Release date: 30 January 1980

Main cast: Naseeruddin Shah, Shabana Azmi, Sudha Chopra, Om Puri

Long before mainstream Hindi cinema learnt to say “representation”, Sai Paranjpye made one of its most perceptive films about disability. Naseeruddin Shah plays Anirudh Parmar, the fiercely independent principal of a school for visually impaired children, who falls in love with Shabana Azmi's widowed Kavita. Anirudh does not want pity disguised as affection, but his determination to reject condescension can harden into pride and insecurity. That contradiction made him a person rather than a lesson – and gave Naseer one of his finest early roles.

Much of ‘Sparsh’ was filmed at Delhi's Blind Relief Association, and its attention to education, autonomy and the gap between help and patronising behaviour still feels unusually clear-eyed. The film won National Awards for Best Hindi Feature Film, Best Actor and Best Screenplay.

3. Kamal Haasan - Raja Paarvai

Director: Singeetam Srinivasa Rao

Release date: 10 April 1981

Main cast: Kamal Haasan, Madhavi, L V Prasad, Y G Mahendran

Kamal Haasan's 100th film as an actor – and his first as a producer – did not celebrate the milestone with an invincible mass hero. Instead, he played Raghu, an independent visually impaired violinist who falls for Nancy, played by Madhavi. Raghu is funny, romantic, professionally gifted and occasionally prickly. The film lets the romance breathe without treating blindness as its only subject. Kamal Haasan even learnt enough violin technique to make the performance physically persuasive.

The Tamil film was also made in Telugu as ‘Amavasya Chandrudu’, released on 29 August 1981. ‘Raja Paarvai’ was a box-office failure, and Kamal Haasan later said that recovering the loss took years, though it gradually acquired cult-classic status.

4. Akshay Kumar - Aankhen

Director: Vipul Amrutlal Shah

Release date: 5 April 2002

Main cast: Amitabh Bachchan, Akshay Kumar, Arjun Rampal, Paresh Rawal, Sushmita Sen

Only Bollywood could look at three visually impaired men and ask, “What if they robbed a bank?” In Vipul Amrutlal Shah's deliciously high-concept thriller, Amitabh Bachchan plays a sacked bank manager who recruits Akshay Kumar's volatile Vishwas Prajapati along with the characters played by Arjun Rampal and Paresh Rawal for an apparently impossible heist. Sushmita Sen's teacher trains the trio to navigate a replica of the bank, while each performer gives the group a different rhythm: Akshay supplies volatility, Arjun the earnestness and Paresh the comic timing.

The conceit is unabashedly pulpy and some of its ideas about heightened senses belong firmly to commercial-movie logic, but ‘Aankhen’ remains an unusual studio thriller in which its visually impaired leads are the plan, not an obstacle to it. The film collected approximately Rs 17.48 crore India net and Rs 29.43 crore worldwide, classified as an average performer.

5. Rani Mukerji - Black

Director: Sanjay Leela Bhansali

Release date: 4 February 2005

Main cast: Amitabh Bachchan, Rani Mukerji, Ayesha Kapur, Shernaz Patel

Rani Mukerji’s Michelle McNally is deafblind, making ‘Black’ broader than a story about visual impairment alone. Inspired partly by Helen Keller's life, Sanjay Leela Bhansali's drama follows Michelle's difficult education under Debraj Sahai, Amitabh Bachchan's unconventional teacher, and later reverses their roles as he develops Alzheimer's disease. Ayesha Kapur plays the younger Michelle, but it is Rani who carries the character into adulthood, university and a complicated bond with the man who gave language to her world.

The film is operatic and deliberately heightened – SLB was never going to whisper where he could summon an orchestra – but Rani anchors the spectacle with discipline and emotional force. She won both the popular and critics' Best Actress prizes at Filmfare. ‘Black’ earned approximately Rs 23.19 crore India net and Rs 40.18 crore worldwide.

6. Kajol - Fanaa

Director: Kunal Kohli

Release date: 26 May 2006

Main cast: Aamir Khan, Kajol, Rishi Kapoor, Kirron Kher, Tabu

Kajol returned to leading-lady duty after a five-year break as Zooni Ali Beg, a visually impaired Kashmiri woman who falls for Aamir Khan's charming Delhi tour guide, Rehan. The first half plays like a swoony Yash Raj romance; then Zooni undergoes surgery that restores her sight, the genre changes lanes and Rehan's real identity turns the love story into a thriller. Kajol's challenge was not simply performing blindness – it was making the audience believe that the trusting woman of the opening and the mother forced into an impossible moral choice belonged to the same emotional journey.

The film's representation is rooted in a familiar “cure” narrative, something contemporary viewers may interrogate more closely, but Zooni remains active rather than ornamental when the plot turns dangerous. ‘Fanaa’ was a major commercial success, grossing approximately Rs 105.48 crore worldwide.

7. Deepika Padukone - Lafangey Parindey

Director: Pradeep Sarkar

Release date: 20 August 2010

Main cast: Neil Nitin Mukesh, Deepika Padukone, Piyush Mishra, Manish Chaudhari

Deepika Padukone plays Pinky Palkar, a roller-skating dancer whose sight is lost in an accident caused by Neil Nitin Mukesh's street fighter Nandu. The guilt-ridden Nandu then helps her retrain for a television talent competition without revealing his role in the accident. If that sounds like several movies racing each other around one Mumbai lane, it is – and Pradeep Sarkar commits to all of them, mixing romance, remorse and a sporting comeback.

Pinky's insistence on returning to the stage gives Deepika more to play than tragedy, though the film never entirely escapes its glossy overcoming disability template. Commercially, it was modest: approximately Rs 21.77 crore India net and Rs 31.63 crore worldwide.

8. Mohanlal - Oppam

Director: Priyadarshan

Release date: 8 September 2016

Main cast: Mohanlal, Samuthirakani, Meenakshi Anoop, Anusree, Nedumudi Venu

Here is the performance standing directly behind the current ‘Haiwaan’ conversation. Mohanlal plays Jayaraman, a visually impaired lift operator and caretaker who becomes the only person capable of identifying a killer through sound, smell and touch. When suspicion falls on him, he must clear his name and protect a young girl from Samuthirakani's vengeful antagonist. Priyadarshan turns the premise into a sleek thriller, but Mohanlal keeps Jayaraman grounded with small behavioural details and an absence of showboating.

The Malayalam film became a hit and grossed about Rs 50 crore worldwide. Its success was large enough to trigger remake interest almost immediately. A decade later, Priyadarshan returned to the material himself with ‘Haiwaan’.

9. Hrithik Roshan - Kaabil

Director: Sanjay Gupta

Release date: 25 January 2017

Main cast: Hrithik Roshan, Yami Gautam, Ronit Roy, Rohit Roy

Hrithik Roshan and Yami Gautam play Rohan and Supriya Bhatnagar, a visually impaired couple whose gentle courtship and marriage are shattered by se**al violence and a system unwilling to protect them. Rohan, a dubbing artist, then weaponises voice, timing and meticulous planning in his pursuit of revenge. Sanjay Gupta packages grief as a twist-heavy vigilante thriller, and Hrithik's star machinery is always humming beneath the surface, but the film gives both characters work, humour and romantic agency before tragedy takes over.

Released in a much-publicised clash with Shah Rukh Khan's ‘Raees’, Kaabil still crossed the century mark in India. It collected approximately Rs 103.84 crore India net and Rs 208.14 crore worldwide.

10. Ravi Teja - Raja The Great

Director: Anil Ravipudi

Release date: 18 October 2017

Main cast: Ravi Teja, Mehreen Pirzada, Radhika Sarathkumar, Prakash Raj, Vivan Bhatena

Ravi Teja's Raja is visually impaired from birth, trained by his head-constable mother and absolutely unwilling to behave like anyone's idea of a tragic hero. When he joins a mission to protect Lucky, the daughter of a slain police officer, the film gives him comedy, romance and full-scale action – including the sort of hero-introduction swagger generally reserved for characters who arrive with wind machines and slow motion.

Director Anil Ravipudi consciously wrote a mainstream entertainer rather than a sombre issue film. That decision made ‘Raja The Great’ unusually visible to mass audiences, though its action scenes and heightened abilities also sparked debate about realism. The film was a commercial success, finishing at approximately Rs 52 crore worldwide and becoming Ravi Teja's highest grosser at the time.

11. Ayushmann Khurrana - Andhadhun

Director: Sriram Raghavan

Release date: 5 October 2018

Main cast: Ayushmann Khurrana, Tabu, Radhika Apte, Anil Dhawan

This entry needs one crucial asterisk: Ayushmann Khurrana's pianist Akash is not visually impaired at the beginning. He pretends to be blind because he believes sensory deprivation improves his music, only to walk into a murder scene where the killers must not discover that he can see. Later, the deception takes a viciously literal turn when Akash is actually blinded. That shifting relationship with sight – performance, protection, punishment and perhaps another lie – makes him one of the most fascinating characters on this list.

Sriram Raghavan's black comedy became a sleeper hit in India before exploding in China, proving that murderous pianos, rabbits and Tabu at her most dangerous require no translation. ‘Andhadhun’ earned approximately Rs 74.32 crore India net and Rs 456.89 crore worldwide. It also won National Awards for Best Hindi Feature Film, Best Actor and Best Adapted Screenplay.

12. Rajkummar Rao - Srikanth

Director: Tushar Hiranandani

Release date: 10 May 2024

Main cast: Rajkummar Rao, Jyotika, Alaya F, Sharad Kelkar

Rajkummar Rao plays Srikanth Bolla, the real-life entrepreneur who was born visually impaired, fought for the right to study science, attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and later built Bollant Industries. Tushar Hiranandani's biographical drama occasionally reaches for crowd-pleasing uplift, but its strongest idea is that the obstacles surrounding Srikanth are often constructed by institutions and attitudes – not by blindness itself. Jyotika plays the teacher who backs him, while Sharad Kelkar appears as investor Ravi Mantha.

The film grew steadily after a Rs 2.41 crore opening day, eventually collecting approximately Rs 50.05 crore India net and Rs 62.92 crore worldwide. In 2026, it won the National Award for Best Hindi Feature Film.

Honourable Mentions

Several other performances deserve space in the conversation. Sanjay Dutt played a visually impaired military veteran in Tanuja Chandra's ‘Dushman’ (1998); Vikram took on blind characters in the Tamil films ‘Kasi’ (2001) and ‘Thaandavam’ (2012); Nayanthara led the Tamil thriller ‘Netrikann’ (2021); Sonam Kapoor headlined the Hindi streaming film ‘Blind’ (2023); and Sayani Gupta played Khanum, a blind Pakistani-Bangladeshi activist, in ‘Margarita with a Straw’ (2015). They range from romance and character drama to revenge thrillers, further demonstrating that visual impairment is not a genre – it is one aspect of a character whose story can travel practically anywhere.

With Saif's Shyam now entering cinemas in ‘Haiwaan’, that conversation has acquired one more high-profile – and highly combustible – case study.