Rajkumar Hirani's next, Sanju, a biopic on Bollywood actor Sanjay Dutt is around the corner. Ranbir Kapoor is playing the lead in the film along with actor Paresh Rawal playing the character of late actor Sunil Dutt, Sanjay Dutt's father.

Ever since the makers started talking about the film, it was heard that they had to struggle a lot to find an actor suitable to play Sunil Dutt's role. In fact, actor Aamir Khan recently revealed that even he was approached by Hirani to play the said character. However, he denied saying that he could only see himself playing Sanjay Dutt in the film. Hirani, though during the trailer launch of the film, revealed that it was out of greed he went to Aamir and offered him the role and he declined it saying he won't want to play an 'old' character in a movie soon after Dangal.

Recommended Read: Sanju to have 2 songs from Sanjay Dutt’s old films, and other revelations made by Ranbir Kapoor

Now, there's another update in the same buzz. In a media interaction recently, Hirani talked about the struggle he had go through while casting for the senior Dutt's character. He revealed that he tried a lot of actor for the role but couldn't get a convincing actor. And it was then he decided that Sanjay Dutt should play the character of his father in Sanju.

He said, "We were struggling with the casting of Sunil Dutt. We tried it with lot of people and in the end thought 'what if Sanjay Dutt plays Sunil Dutt!' But, then we thought it's a stupid idea. How would it look: Sanjay Dutt standing and calling Ranbir Kapoor 'Sanju beta...' ".

He also talked about why he then zeroed-in on actor Paresh Rawal for the same role. He said, "Sunil Dutt never kept a beard. He never had white hair. We didn't have tools. There was no way I was going to make any actor look like Sunil Dutt. So, we gave up on that. We thought let's forget matching the facial expressions. Let's get a father figure. Paresh Ji was just asked to match the traits of Sunil Dutt and act like him. With Manisha ji though, with the kind of hairstyle and matching the lipstick shade and stuff, we got some resemblance to Nargis ji."

As the trailer and other promos of the film show, Rawal seems to have done a good job with his role. Also featuring Anushka Sharma, Dia Mirza, Jim Sarbh and Vicky Kaushal in pivotal roles, Sanju releases on July 29.