IT’S FREE REIN FOR THE ANTIHEROES
Top actors in Bollywood are casting aside their squeaky clean image to portray characters that are dark and flawed
Who’s a Bollywood hero? Well, conventionally, he’s the one who fights the bad guys, takes the moral high ground, and heroically saves the damsel in distress. Down the years, the A-listers of Hindi cinema have seldom, if at all, broken this mould. But now, it’s happening in a flurry. Akshay Kumar, Ranveer Singh and Ranbir Kapoor show that they’re not shy about ditching the image. Even Rajkummar Rao, the quintessential good fellow on screen until now, has taken on a very different role.
With his latest release, Omerta, Rajkummar has taken on the challenging role of the British ht error terror is tr is of Pakistani descent, Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh. “I’m just doing whatever excites me. I’m an actor and it’s my job to play different characters,” says Rajkummar. “I feel our audience expects [new things] from us now,” he adds.
Ranveer’s performance in Padmaavat as the menacing Alauddin Khilji, obsessed with queen Padmavati, is a watershed in his career. After the release, as the praise poured in, the actor said in a media interview, “When I was offered Padmaavat, most people were of the opinion that a hero should not play the anti-hero.” How wrong!
In the upcoming biopic on actor Sanjay Dutt, lead star Ranbir Kapoor plays a person who, despite his fame, was a drug addict and was jailed for another offence — not your typical shining character.
Akshay Kumar’s role in 2.0, the sequel to Robot (2010), is a stunning change from his usual Bandbox clean image. He is the villain, Dr Richard, opposite Rajinikanth.
About these choices, actor Adil Hussain, who played villainous characters in Agent Vinod (2012) and Ishqiya (2010), says, “I guess, the era of black-and-white characters is over. Viewers are educated enough to accept characters with grey shades, which is an extremely good sign, because people aren’t black-and-white. The artist community in any part of the world is supposed to be the conscience-keeper of society. They’re evolving. It’s an evolutionary process in the understanding of humans.”
Filmmaker Ketan Mehta feels that the very positive audience reaction proves that a flawed hero is much more interesting than a perfect hero. Also, he adds, “Popular actors have become a little more adventurous with their roles. It’s a great sign.”
The anti-hero was always there — think of Amitabh Bachchan’s ‘angry young man’ and Shah Rukh Khan in Darr, Baazigar (both 1993) etc. But a lot more actors are playing such characters now, and that’s because, says trade analyst Taran Adarsh, “people want to add different shades to their roles”. He says, “I think all actors today are quality-conscious, and viewers love the experiment.”