Javed Akhtar was born on 22nd March 1945 in Gwalior. His father
Jan Nisar Akhtar was a Urdu poet. Javed was called as Jadoo in his childhood. Later,he was given the official name of Javed since it was the closest to the word jadoo. He spent most of his childhood and was schooled in Lucknow. He graduated from Saifiya College in Bhopal.
Initially, in the 1970s, there was no concept of having the same writer for the screenplay, story and dialogue, nor were the writers given any credits in the titles. Rajesh Khanna is credited with giving Salim Khan and Javed Akhtar their first chance to become screenplay writers by offering them work in Haathi Mere Saathi. Javed Akhtar stated in an interview that "One day, he went to Salimsaab and said that Mr. Devar had given him a huge signing amount with which he could complete the payment for his bungalow, Aashirwad. But the film was a remake and the script of the original was far from being satisfactory. He told us that if we could set right the script, he would make sure we got both money and credit. This was his pairing with Salim was born. The duo together as, Slaim Javed, went on to write script/dialogues for numerous films.
Their first big success was the script for Andaz, followed by Adhikar (1971), Haathi Mere Saathi and Seeta Aur Geeta (1972). They also had hits with Yaadon Ki Baaraat (1973), Zanjeer (1973), Haath Ki Safai (1974), Deewaar (1975), Sholay (1975), Chacha Bhatija (1977), Don (1978), Trishul (1978), Dostana (1980), Kranti (1981), Zamana (1985) and Mr. India (1987). In 1982, they separated their ways and after that Javed saab started writing songs for the films.
Akhtar was married to Honey Irani, with whom he had two children, Farhan Akhtar and Zoya Akhtar, both film directors and actors. Javed married Shabana Azmi, the daughter of Urdu poet,
Kaifi Azmi and later divorced Irani.
Akhtar was awarded the civilian honour of Padma Shri by the Government of India in 1999, followed by the Padma Bhushan in 2007. In 2013, he received the Sahitya Akademi Award in Urdu, India's second highest literary honour, for his poetry collection Lava.In 2019, he was conferred with an honorary doctorate (Doctor of Letters) by the Jamia Hamdard University.
