Rajkummar Rao - The Realistic Hero

The first thing you will notice about Rajkummar Rao, if you are lucky to meet the actor everybody is raving about these days, is his humility. The actor, busy with shoots in Mumbai, displays a calm demeanour as we settle down to what turns out to be an extensive, reveal-all-inner workings interview. The 34-yearold actor is brimming with wisdom on all things cinema as we probe his creative methods.

- Punita Sabharwal

BE THE HERO OF YOUR OWN NARRATIVE

There was a time when Shah Rukh Khan was the ultimate story of an outsider making it big in Hindi cinema. Turn many reels to 2019 and Rajkummar Rao has become the boldest outsider taking Bollywood by storm and giving India entry to the Oscars – Newton. So many youngsters live the dream from their childhood to be the next Shah Rukh Khan of the industry but not many get to live it. Rajkummar Rao has clearly made his mark in the challenging industry. “I really don’t know how it feels to be an insider. As an outsider, you have to start from scratch,” says the actor in a matter-of-fact tone. Come to think of it, the beginnings have a cinematic touch.

Growing up in a joint family in Gurgaon, Rao remembers the weekend ritual of the whole family sitting together and binge-watching Hindi movies. There are people who watch and move to something else after their piece of action and drama but Rao started seeing himself right up there someday. With age, his fascination with the stars and being one of them grew further. He started mimicking his favorites, whether it was Shah Rukh Khan’s famous romantic pose, which he further relived in one of his movies, or the power-packed performance of Senior Bachchan. The child in him was living that dream day in and day out. Soon, Rao joined an acting school in Delhi. Remembering the same, Rao shares, “I started enjoying the process of being somebody else. I just wanted to continue doing this all my life. Whenever I got a chance on stage or in school I kept doing it.” Once he finished college from the University of Delhi where he tried his hand on stage, he went on to join the famed Film and Television Institute of India, Pune, to make his dream come true. Reminiscing those days, Rao says, “That taught me a lot about acting. That acting is deep.”

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