The age gap between Bollywood's top heroes and their heroines went from 5 years to 20

362 films with Salman Khan, Shah Rukh Khan, Aamir Khan, Akshay Kumar and Ajay Devgn. The line is the hero's real age when each film came out, and each dot is the real age of his heroine in that film. Pick a hero, then a dot to see the film.

Who counts as his heroine? The actress who plays his romantic lead. Mothers, sisters, cameos and films with no clear pair are left out, and every pick was read through by hand.

Click a dot for the film

362 films · 1988–2026

All five heroes and their heroines

The average gap was 5 years in the 1990s and 20 in the 2020s. The hero was 40 or older in 133 films, his heroine in 9. Only 10 films had a heroine older than the hero, the last in 2004.

Click a dot to see the film and the two ages.

Average hero's ageHis heroine's age, one dot a filmThe gap to the average heroine's age over seven years

Real ages at release. Source: Wikidata and Wikipedia, heroines checked by hand. visualized.in/evergreen

How this was made +

Films come from Wikidata and the English Wikipedia: every film with one of the five in its cast and in the starring list of its Wikipedia page, which drops cameos.

Ages are whole years on the day of release, from birth dates on Wikidata. The gap is the difference between the two ages shown. Averages use exact ages, so they can differ slightly from the printed gaps.

Some actresses' published birth years are disputed: those are used as Wikidata has them, after correcting two that were wrong. Who counts as the heroine is a judgement call in films with several leads. Where the pair was unclear, the film was left out rather than guessed.