Who was Shashi Kapoor's wife, Jennifer Kendal, the BAFTA-nominated actress?

Do you know Shashi Kapoor's wife, Jennifer Kendal was also an award-winning actor? Over the years, there have been several actors born outside the country who’ve relocated to India and made it their home, after building a career here, and Jennifer was one of them too.

How did Jennifer Kendal come to India and meet Shashi Kapoor?

Jennifer Kendal, though born in England, has lived most of her life in India. She first moved here as a part of her father Geoffrey Kendal’s theatre company Shakespeareana, along with her elder sister and fellow actor Felicity Kendal.

After years of travelling across India and performing on stage, Jennifer debuted on the big screen in James Ivory’s Shakespeare Wallah in 1965. Loosely based on her father Geoffrey’s personal and professional journey, the film starred her husband, Shashi Kapoor, opposite her older sister, Felicity. Jennifer finally got the chance to star opposite Shashi in James’s Bombay Talkie (1970).

Jennifer then played a supporting role in Shyam Benegal’s period drama Junoon (1979), also starring Shashi, Nafisa Ali, Shabana Azmi, and Naseeruddin Shah, among others. But she became popular as Violet Stoneham, the pretty Anglo-Indian school teacher in Aparna Sen’s 36 Chowringhee Lane (1981), which even got her a nomination at the BAFTA Awards in the Best Actress in a Leading Role category.

Her films James's Heat and Dust (1975), the 1984 film adaptation of MM Kaye’s epic novel The Far Pavilions, and Satyajit Ray’s Bengali romantic movie, Ghare Baire (1984). She also turned a costume designer for films like Junoon and Raj Tilak’s 1977 romantic drama Mukti. This film too starred Shashi Kapoor as the hero.

Her marriage with Shashi Kapoor

Jennifer became a prominent face in the industry as Shashi's wife. As per her older sister Felicity’s memoir White Cargo, the actor couple first met back in 1956 in Mumbai when Jennifer attended a play at the Prithvi Theatre company, owned by Shashi’s father, the legendary Prithviraj Kapoor. At the time it was a travelling theatre company and Shashi worked there as a theatre assistant.

As per Felicity’s account, Shashi saw Jennifer from the curtains and instantly fell in love. They began dating immediately after a date at a Chinese restaurant. However, as per Geoffrey’s memoir The Shakespeare Wallah, Jennifer and Shashi had met in Kolkata in 1956, for the first time, where she was playing Miranda in William Shakespeare's play, The Tempest.

Soon after, however, Shakespearana fell short on actors, and Geoffrey borrowed Shashi from Prithviraj. A happily obliging Shashi worked hard under Jennifer, who was four years older than him, practising to better his amateur English and become a Shakespeare actor within months. However, Geoffrey wasn’t in favour of their relationship.

“When they were doing theatre, they were poor. They were underslept and underfed, and my father would tell me how they would be tormented by hunger while strolling down the streets, both my parents trying to decide if they could get half a paratha. Then, they would walk past a restaurant and there would be my grandfather, Geoffrey Kendal, having a huge meal with a beer. My father couldn’t walk in. He was his employee and he was also stealing his daughter. So there was no way he could march into the storm,” Shashi and Jennifer’s daughter Sanjana had recalled in Aseem Chhabra’s 2016 biography Shashi Kapoor: The Household, The Star.

However, the relationship was supported by Shashi's elder brother and fellow actor Shammi and his wife Geeta Bali, who had also eloped to marry a few years before that. Jennifer and Shashi left Shakespeareana in rebellion after they bagged job offers in a Singapore-based company, and got relocated. But that didn’t work out and they were stuck overseas, and finally Shashi had to reach out to his eldest brother, actor-filmmaker Raj Kapoor, who flew them back to Mumbai and got them married in 1958.

Shashi and Jennifer soon became parents to two sons — Kunal (father of Zahan Kapoor, of Black Warrant fame), Karan, and daughter Sanjana Kapoor. Over the next few years, Jennifer reconciled with her father as well and spent a lot of summers in England with him. Shashi began doing four shifts a day in order to cover the expenses borne by his new family, who lived across Mumbai, Goa, and England. He came to be known as Taxi, because he’d just shuttle from one set to another while working.

Shashi and Jennifer attempted to give back to the theatre by giving Prithvi Theatre a home in Juhu, to honour Prithviraj Kapoor. It’s now operated by their kids Sanjana and Kunal.

Jennifer succumbed to colon cancer two years later, breaking Shashi irrevocably. After her death, Shashi went on to star in several films, and also turned director with the Amitabh Bachchan's 1991 action film Ajooba, which was a commercial failure. He spent the last days of his career doing international films in memory of his late wife. Shashi’s health deteriorated in the 2000s, and he died at the age of 79 in 2017.

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