The new Bollywood brigade
As 2017 comes to an end, here’s looking back at debutantes who left a lasting impact with their performances
he year just-ending was not great for new talent. Unless we look at Mahira Khan as new talent. And that would be as calamitous as giving Diljit Dosanjh the best debutants award in 2016 for So, who were the newcomers to really make an impact this year?
Salman Khan’s 10-year-old co-star in Kabir Khan’s absolutely stole the show from the superstar. Natural and unspoilt, Martin would have been the perfect fit for Salman’s role.
Playing Raveena Tandon’s toyboy in Onir’s study of love, sex and heartbreak, Bisht brought in a sense of innocence and desperation to his role in is hope here.
Three Pakistani actresses made an impressive Bollywood debut in 2017. While it would be unfair to describe the seasoned Mahira Khan and Saba Qamar as debutantes in and respectively, Sajal Ali playing the great Sridevi’s traumatised daughter (in was a relative newcomer on both sides of the border. This year, we needed new talent to come in from other parts of the world.That’s show short-staffed our cinema was in 2017.
She threw off the burqa to indulge in a spot of shoplifting in this overrated film. God knows what the director was trying to probe. But young Plabita proved a point in
One can make an impact in a film that wears the burqa just to throw it off as a fashion statement.
As the young Sardarji from Amole Gupte’s film, Sniff, whose sense of smell is gone, Khushmeet was a natural born scene-stealer. He made a good enough impact. Strangely, it was the kids who made all the impact during the year starved of new talent.
In the TV actor made a telling impact in a role of a do-gooder who is unable to do good for himself. Strangely, this superb film and its capable performers made no impact at the box-office.
She is by far the most accomplished Bollywood debutante of the year. But then Parvathy was not new to excellence, having proved her mettle in Malayalam movies. Nonetheless, during a year when new talent was scarce and scarily scant, we welcomed this spontaneous performer with open arms in the movie The third debutant child actor of the year to make an impact. Playing Saif Ali Khan’s son in this young performer revealed rare intelligence in handling complex scenes.