New Delhi: Karan Johar has just turned 54. He has spent nearly three decades juggling multiple identities in Bollywood, moving effortlessly between directing, producing, designing, and acting.
Bollywood rarely experiments with public personalities as real selves on screen. But whenever Johar did such cameos, in nearly 12 films, he imported his public persona into the film’s narrative. These were not heavily written roles, but brief cameos of his real-life celebrity persona into fictional worlds.
Johar’s first on-screen appearance as himself was in Home Delivery (2005), where Sunny, played by Vivek Oberoi, is shown writing a script for Karan Johar. The scene subtly blurs the line between fiction and non-fiction, making Johar less of a character and more of a real-world interruption inside the fictional narrative.
Johar later appeared in Alag (2006), a science-fiction film. In the 2007 Shah Rukh Khan-starrer Om Shanti Om, he joined a group of celebrities in the celebratory song sequence, ‘Deewangi, Deewangi’. Johar was also involved behind the scenes as a costume designer for the film.
Johar’s appearances continued with Luck by Chance (2009), Fashion (2008), Shamitabh (2015) and Shaandaar (2015). His cameos remained brief yet engaging because they were not performances but rather cultural references.
Johar is not the only filmmaker to appear as himself on screen. His contemporary Anurag Kashyap, who directed Bombay Velvet (2015) where Johar played an antagonist for the first time, later starred as himself in AK vs AK (2020). Unlike Johar’s brief cameos, Kashyap’s role became central to the story, turning his conflict with Anil Kapoor into a commentary on the Bollywood industry. Kashyap also made cameo appearances as a fictionalised version of himself in Zoya Akhtar’s directorial debut Luck by Chance (2009) and later in Happy New Year (2014) directed by Farah Khan.
Even earlier, Amol Palekar appeared as himself in Khamosh directed by Vidhu Vinod Chopra, while Subhash Ghai frequently made cameos in his own films like Pardesh (1997), Taal (1999), Khalnayak (1993) much like Alfred Hitchcock.
Among the greats, even Quentin Tarantino is known for appearing in films he directs. But unlike Johar, Tarantino plays smaller fictional characters instead of himself. In Reservoir Dogs (1992), Tarantino appeared as one of the thieves, while in Pulp Fiction (1994) he played Jimmie Dimmick, helping the protagonists during a crucial scene.
Johar’s multiple identities
Within mainstream Hindi cinema, as a director, Johar built a world filled with melodrama, college corridors, family feuds and love triangles. Across eight feature films and two streaming series, his stories often returned to the theme of complicated families, friendships collapsing under love, and characters wearing designer clothes.
Apart from directing, Johar also appeared as a child actor in the science-fiction television series Indradhanush (1989), portraying the character of Shrikant. Over the years, he also made cameos in films such as C Kkompany (2008), Good Newwz (2019), and Salaam-e-Ishq (2007).
Compared to his avatar as a director or actor, Johar, the producer, is a whole new person. Under Dharma Productions, Johar backed films such as Wake Up Sid (2009), Kapoor & Sons (2016), and Homebound (2025), movies that are different from the ones he has directed. Rooted in middle-class Indian households, these films showed audiences a glimpse of their own lives.
Johar has turned his celebrity persona into a part of Bollywood storytelling. His cameos may last only a few minutes but they reflect a larger cinematic trend where filmmakers occasionally walk into their own fictional worlds.
(Edited by Janaki Pande)