There is a slight sense of achievement: Vicky Kaushal

With four releases in seven months, Vicky Kaushal has had a smashing start to 2018. His first release of the year, Raazi, was a major box-office success. He followed that up with Love Per Square Foot and Lust Stories on the web, and Sanju on the big screen.

Vicky’s performance in Sanju — he plays a close friend to Sanjay Dutt (played by Ranbir Kapoor) — has earned him accolades from the audience and critics alike, but the actor wasn’t in town to bask in the success, as he was away in Serbia, shooting for his next project, Uri. However, Vicky still managed to catch a short break so he could spend time with his family in Mumbai for a day. He says, “My family is over the moon. In fact, when the film was released, I was in Serbia, so I got this one-day break and I came back to Mumbai to meet my family. I didn’t want to miss a chance to give my family a hug and share the happiness with them, because I missed out on all the madness. It was nice to see my parents so happy. It has been overwhelming.”

He adds, “The first half of the year has been amazing for me. For the past year-and-ahalf, I’ve only been on film sets shooting, and now this is the year when all those films are coming out. I’ve been looking forward to seeing [the result of] all the hard work. I’m very glad that I got to work with such talented filmmakers, and I got to grow as an actor just by being a part of such varied projects.”

Vicky started his career with Masaan (2015), which had an ensemble cast. He has since been in multi-starrers and content-driven films, including Raman Raghav 2.0 (2016), and he has always managed to make an impact. The actor credits the audience for that, saying, “I won’t say I have arrived, but there is a slight sense of achievement. You feel nice when people start calling out to you by the name of your character. You feel validated and motivated. I want to just keep pushing the envelope, [and] I do feel like the lines between playing a hero and an important character are blurring. In a realistic world, every actor wants to be a hero, so that’s never going to change, and that’s fair. But the lines are blurring, because audiences have evolved beautifully. Even if an actor does one scene and people like it, they’ll go home and Google the actor’s name and then follow his work. It’s a great time to be an actor.”

You feel nice when people start calling out to you by the name of your character. You feel validated and motivated... [And] I do feel like the lines between playing a hero and an important character are blurring.

VICKY KAUSHAL ACTOR

PHOTO: PAUL DAVID MARTIN Vicky Kaushal started his Bollywood career with the acclaimed film Masaan (2015)