Dharmendra Kewal Krishan Deol was born on 8 December 1935 in Nasrali, in the Ludhiana district of Punjab, the son of a village schoolteacher. He worked as a drilling-machine operator for an American oil-exploration contractor before entering a Filmfare talent contest that took him to Bombay in 1958. He often recalled being paid 51 rupees for his debut in Dil Bhi Tera Hum Bhi Tere in 1960.

The first years were slow and poorly paid: supporting parts in Shola Aur Shabnam and Bandini, and leading roles in small films that paid a few thousand rupees each. What changed his trajectory was Anupama and, decisively, Phool Aur Patthar in 1966, a solo hit that made him a major star, brought his first Filmfare nomination and established the physical presence that earned him the epithet He-Man of Bollywood. From 1966 his fee moved from thousands of rupees to lakhs, and five or six releases a year became the real engine of his income.

Sholay in 1975, in which he played Veeru opposite Amitabh Bachchan’s Jai, is among the most commercially successful and culturally significant films ever made in India, and it is also the one film for which his fee is on the record: 15 lakh rupees, the highest of any member of the cast, at a time when Bachchan was paid one lakh (DNA India). Chupke Chupke the same year demonstrated a comic timing critics had underrated, and Dharam Veer, The Burning Train and Ghulami kept him at the top of the fee table into the late 1980s.

That single documented figure anchors our estimate of what the craft paid across sixty-five years. Working era by era: some 25 films in the early 1960s at a few thousand rupees each; around 70 films between 1966 and 1975 at an average near five lakh; roughly 110 films in his peak years from 1976 to 1990 at about 20 lakh; some 50 in the 1990s at around 40 lakh; and about 40 character and family-production roles since 2000 at roughly one crore. That gives gross acting fees of 75 to 125 crore rupees in the money of the day, our estimate, or about 9 to 15 million dollars – and several times that in today’s rupees, since most of it was earned when a lakh bought what a crore buys now.

He appeared in more than 300 films across seven decades (Variety), a body of work matched by very few actors anywhere. He received the Filmfare Lifetime Achievement Award in 1997 and the Padma Bhushan, India’s third-highest civilian honour, in 2012 (the Padma Awards). His late career was its own achievement: Apne in 2007 and Yamla Pagla Deewana in 2011 put him on screen with both sons, and Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahaani in 2023 introduced him to an audience born fifty years after Sholay. Adjusted for Indian inflation era by era, the fees above are worth roughly 600 to 900 crore rupees in today’s money, on our estimate.

He served as Member of Parliament for Bikaner from 2004 to 2009 after winning the seat for the BJP, a single term he did not seek to repeat (The Tribune). He died in Mumbai on 24 November 2025, aged 89 (The Tribune, Al Jazeera), and the tributes that followed came from the President, Vice President and Prime Minister of India (All India Radio) as well as from three generations of the industry.

Dharmendra belonged to a generation of stars who advertised rarely and cheaply. His few campaigns paid a few lakh rupees at most, and the commercial use of his image went instead into Garam Dharam, where the persona earned a share of the business rather than a fee. Sponsorship contributes nothing material to the estimate.

His business interests were substantial and built largely on land. He farmed at scale on a 100-acre property at Lonavala, between Mumbai and Pune. Vijayta Films, the production company he founded in 1983 to launch Sunny Deol in Betaab, went on to produce for Bobby Deol and the family’s later ensemble pictures, giving him a producer’s share on films in which he also acted. The Garam Dharam restaurant chain, launched in 2015 and trading on his own screen persona, grew into several outlets in Delhi and along the highway north of it (Garam Dharam).

Property is the dominant asset. The Lonavala farmhouse was held for roughly fifty years in a corridor whose land values have appreciated enormously, and on our estimate the 100 acres are worth 100 to 200 crore rupees today. Around it sit the family bungalow in Juhu, Mumbai, worth perhaps 60 to 100 crore, ancestral agricultural land in Punjab, and a collection of vehicles; The Tribune’s account of his holdings lists the multi-crore properties, the culinary ventures and the farmland together as the estate’s main components (The Tribune). The restaurant and production businesses add a further 20 to 40 crore on our estimate.