Born as Kulbhushan Pandit, the actor was a police officer in the late Forties at Mahim police station in uptown Bombay, but later quit the service following his alleged involvement in a murder case. Soon, he changed his name to Raaj Kumar and made his screen debut in 1950 in a film called Neeli. After two lesser-known films, he rose to fame with 'Mother India'. His popularity later skyrocketed with 'Pakeezah'. Raaj Kumar went on to star in popular films like Waqt, Haqeeqat, Saudagar, Tirangaa amongst the others.

But it was Pakeezah ("The Pure"), a highly charged film of the late Sixties which made Kumar a household name. In it he plays an aristocrat who unabashedly falls in love with a cheap but fiercely attractive dancing girl after seeing just her feet in the darkness of a railway compartment. A torrid love affair between the aristocrat and the courtesan follows, which breaks through India's rigid social and class barriers but ends, expectedly for the times, in tragedy.

Pakeezah rocketed Kumar to fame, and for years thousands of young suitors tried passionately to imitate him in wooing their loved ones. It was followed by a string of successes like Heer Ranjha, a timeless story of a forbidden love, much like Romeo and Juliet, set in the northern Indian province of Punjab, Waqt ("Time"), Haqeekat ("Reality"), Saudagar ("Merchant") and Karma Yogi ("Beggar of fate"), all made from the late Sixties to the late Seventies.

Raaj Kumar won a Filmfare Award in the Best supporting actor category for his role as a cancer patient in the movie Dil Ek Mandir. Unlike other Bollywood actors who often take on two or even three films simultaneously, Kumar was selective and professional in his approach, rarely ever working in more than one film at a time. In the Nineties, he acted in only two films, Tiranga ("Tri-coloured Flag") and God and Gun.