One of Bollywood's living legends, a veteran heartthrob who has cast his cinematic spell over generations of Indian women, is about to embark on a scouting mission for a new leading lady — in Inverness.

Dev Anand, an award-winning director and one of the world's most celebrated actors, will stop off in Scotland on his way to the Cannes Film Festival this week to search for locations and a female lead for a new “international romance” tentatively titled When Heartbeats are the Same.

Life, it would seem, is imitating art: the man known as “India's Gregory Peck” says his love affair with the Highlands began ten years ago when he travelled to Pitlochcry to direct and star in Main Solah Baras Ki — the story of an Indian filmaker's hunt for the perfect leading woman.

“There was magic in the scenery everywhere, in Scotland's countryside, its towns, its lakes, its valleys and dales,” Mr Anand, 84, told The Times. “My whole being is excited at the prospect of my return. One movie in Scotland is not enough,” he added. “My script will demand local actors.”

Mr Anand has been invited by the Scottish Highlands and Islands Film Commission, a body whose past achievements include luring Mel Gibson to film Brave Heart in the story's homeland. Funding permitting, Mr Anand says he will search for Scottish musicians to compose a score for the new project, in which he plans to take the role of the father of an Indian hero who will be played by a yet-to-be-discovered “hot young star”.

Mr Anand, who is renowned for unearthing new talent, is also pondering opening an office for his production company in Inverness.

The concept is not entirely new: Indian film crews regularly travel beyond the subcontinent to find mountainous landscapes that can double for Kashmir, which is beset by violence. “No Hindi movie is complete without a Shah Rukh Khan or a Kareena Kapoor [two Bollywood superstars] gyrating in the meadows of Scotland,” the Hindustan Times wrote last week.

Few Indians, however, exhibit the same affection for Scotland as Mr Anand. His recent autobiography, Romancing with Life, commended Edinburgh as the prettiest city in the world. And if his plans sound a little far fetched, few stars sport Mr Anand's credibility.

He set out from his home city of Lahore to seek his fortune in Bombay in 1943, when Gandhi's Quit India movement was still agitating the British Raj. In 1965, Dev saab (the honorific by which he is known to his legion of fans) broke new ground when he directed and starred in Guide, an American-Indian co-production that will be celebrated as a world classic in Cannes in May. The film, based on the novel by R.K. Narayan, was shot in both English and Hindi, with the English version scripted by the Nobel laureate Pearl S. Buck.

It has taken four decades for Bollywood and Hollywood to build on Mr Anand's pan-continental foundation and only now is a new breed of film mogul emerging — one as comfortable in Los Angeles as in Bombay.

As Bollywood goes global, Ronnie Screwvala, a leading Bombay-based producer who prides himself on “pushing the envelope”, will this summer release The Happening, which is being billed as a “paranoid thriller” — hardly standard Bollywood fare.

Mr Anand may also be keen to break down new barriers, but for him, romance remains the thing. “Boy meet girl: it usually succeeds,” he said. “Look at Shakespeare; look anywhere in world. It is something the whole world understands.”

On Location

— Between 2000 and 2003, eight Bollywood films were shot in Scotland

— Pyaar, Ishq aur Mohabbat (Love, Love, Love), a multimillion-dollar production from the Trimurti Film Company of Bombay, was shot in ten different locations in Glasgow, which had its première in Govan

— Nina's Heavenly Delights tells the story of a female Asian chef who falls in love after returning home to her family's Glasgow curry house from the bright lights of London

— In Kandukondain Kandukondain, Eilean Donan Castle in Dornie hosted the Bollywood starlet Aishwarya Rai

Sources: scotland.org; bollyfm.net; visitbritain.com

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