Endearing Everyman

It’s easy to forget that Rajkummar Rao isn’t the hero of Bareilly Ki Barfi(BKB). His rough “Hallooo” and timid “Theek tha na” leave the audience in splits.

- Suhani Singh

And he’s so winning as the gullible Pritam Vidrohi, who is forced to pretend he is all machismo, viewers wind up rooting for him to get the girl. But BKB isn’t the only great work that Rao did this year. He brought a compelling tension to the story of a man abandoned in a highrise in Trapped. And there’s plenty more to come in 2017.

In mid-September, Rao heads to Toronto to promote the biopic-drama Omerta, in which he plays Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, the British born terrorist who kidnapped journalist Daniel Pearl for Al Qaeda in 2002—resulting in Pearl’s murder. Rao then returns home to promote the black comedy Newton, in which he plays an idealistic rookie government official charged with conducting elections in Maoist Chhattisgarh. And he finished the last shooting schedule of a web series based on the life of Subhash Chandra Bose for ALTBalaji.