THE INSIDER

Actor Harshvardhan Rane on negotiating an industry of great inequities, the films he’s betting on this year and why he’ll never mistake Bollywood for a family

- ANKUR PATHAK

Harshvardhan Rane, who has acted in a string of Telugu films and three Hindi films, is, momentarily, grappling with a feeling that most actors dread: the fear of anonymity. While he started his career with the TV show, Left Right Left (2008), and then moved on to doing Telugu films, it was in 2016 that he made his Hindi debut with Sanam Teri Kasam. Post that, he appeared in films by directors as diverse as JP Dutta (Paltan, 2018) and Bejoy Nambiar (Taish, 2020) and yet, one can sense, he feels invisible in a vocation where visibility appears to be the biggest currency.

Holed up in his Mumbai apartment, Rane, over a video call, says that his work, he fears, has perhaps gotten lost in the volley of content that has flooded our screens in the past few years. “After the three films I did, I can sense that the trade is curious about me, that the industry wants to work with me. But outside of that, I’m not sure how I’m perceived,” he says, adding that Instagram, where he has over a million followers, cannot be a reliable yardstick to gauge people’s sentiments.

Having grown up on a steady diet of Bachchan films like Zanjeer, Deewar and Agneepath, Rane had his heart set on becoming an actor, but it was hard to convince his family in Gwalior about his ambitions. At 16, Rane ran away from home for Delhi, the nearest “big city” that he could think of. By then, his mother had already moved out. He had his sister Rohini for support, someone he’s still the closest to.