In this weekend’s blog, I am back on Bollywood.
It is very easy to get typecast in Bollywood. Since cinema lovers in India like to relate to actors in a certain role, and only envision them like that. So Nirupa Roy was always the mother, Iftekhar and Jagdish Raj were always police officers, AK Hangal was inevitably the wise, old man in the village. However, times are changing and it is only fascinating to see today’s actors scratch deeper than the surface and make meaty roles out of the characters offered to them.
Here are such performances which changed the audience’s perception of the actor.
1 Varun Dhawan in Badlapur– Having made his debut in Karan Johar’s Student of the Year in 2012, and then followed it up with acting in his father’s Main Tera Hero. No one could imagine him in the role he portrayed in Sriram Raghavan’s film Badlapur. He acted so well that even actors like Nawazuddin Siddiqui and Vinay Pathak were looking like second fiddle to him.
2 Shah Rukh Khan in Chak De India– He is known as the lover boy of Bollywood, and in spite of Swades some of his detractors were convinced he could not act to save his life. His performance as Kabir Khan did not have a false note.
3 Hrithik Roshan in Guzaarish– Going against his image of action her/superman, he played a quadriplegic magician who wishes to enthuse himself. In most of the film, he is shown lying in the bed, where he communicates with others.
4 Alia Bhatt in Udta Punjab– After her first film, she quickly became the face of urban youth. She turned the table on her image by playing a Bihari worker in Udta Punjab. Circumstances cause her to become a heroin addict, but she showed maturity in playing this role.
5 Shahid Kapoor in Haider– Before he played Tommy Singh in Udta Punjab, his acting career peaked in Vishal Bhardwaj’s Haider. Playing the Kashmiri version of Helmet, he finally lived up to the rich lineage of his father Pankaj Kapoor.
6 Deepika Padukone in Piku– She transitioned from modeling to acting in 2007 with Om Shanti Om, and critics dubbed her as plastic in her initial films. In Shoojit Sarkar’s Piku, she brought the everyday urban, working woman to life as she takes care of her aging father and looks for love at the same time.
7 Saif Ali Khan in Omkara- A London-educated person was never going to fit into the mold of the Bollywood hero. He struggled and then discovered his maturity in the early 2000s. And then he went on to play one of the most iconic villains in Vishal Bhardwaj’s Omkara. His portrayal of Langa Tyagi was outstanding.
8 Rani Mukherji in Black– Quite possibly the height of her long career, she shined in the role of Michelle Mcnelley, where she played the character of a deaf/dumb and blind girl. This was her life’s best role.
9 Amitabh Bachchan in Paa– Turning the tables on the wrong side of 60s, the veteran actor played a 13-year-old Auro, who is diagnosed with Progeria. Director R Balki managed to extract the most un Amitabh performance from him. His son Abhishek Bachchan played his father in the film.
10 Vidya Balan in Dirty Picture– Having begun as the middle-class Bengali daughter in Parineeta, she faced an identity crisis competing with her contemporaries trying to look in a certain way. And then came Dirty Picture where she unabashedly played the role of a starlet based on Silk Smitha. She brought back the sexy look from a different time, which was not skinny jeans.
11 Ranbir Kapoor in Rocket Singh: Salesman of the Year– He sent everyone in a tizzy when he signed this movie, which was unlike any other Bollywood standard fare. Here the leading man is Sardar. He played the character with infectious optimism, never going for low-hanging fruits.
12 Priyanka Chopra in Barfi-One of the most glamorous actresses in the country. She proved her mettle as an actress when she played an autistic character. With short curly hair and with hardly any dialogue to communicate with her deaf/mute lover played by Ranbir Kapoor, she did some of the most exciting work of her career in this film.
Other than above, there were performances like Abhishek Bachchan in Yuva, Kareena Kapoor in Chameli, Rishi Kapoor in Agneepath and Kapoors & Sons, and Manoj Bajpai in Aligarh, which can be considered breakthrough performances.
Hope you liked this list, if you have any other recent breakthrough performances by any other actors, please let me know.
Waiting for your views on this blog.
Anil Malik
Mumbai, India
2nd December 2022.