The Versatile Actor

“As an actor, you need to be versatile. You need to challenge yourself”- Colin Morgan.

Challenging yourself with a role that can even lead to your death is something very risky. People may or may not survive the trauma that the role had given them. Taking up a role like Alauddin Khilji was supposedly a huge risk from Ranveer’s side when he was rising up to the level of a Bollywood superstar. But the way that role impacted people’s minds on and off the screen was something tremendous. I’ve been watching Ranveer’s acting ventures since Band Baaja Baaraat. A person who doesn’t have a prior acting experience, who was an Assistant Director by profession being selected as the main lead of an Aditya Chopra movie is a very rare and special thing. The way he portrayed Bittoo Sharma with much ease made the audience think that he was a Delhi boy in real. From there the path he followed was filled with the essence of versatility. Ricky, Varun, Ram, Bikram, Gabo, Dev, Kabir, Bajirao, Dharam, Khilji, Simmba, Murad; every character was completely different from each other. Even though he had done these many characters, the three characters that touched my heart and soul were the ones created by my all-time favorite director Sanjay Leela Bhansali. He is that one person who mostly made use of the inner rage within Ranveer. The energy and madness that Ranveer gave to the three characters transformed the theatres into a celebration mode. When it comes to Ram, it’s full of passion and wildness. It’s all about the steaming chemistry that he had with Leela. If we take the case of Bajirao, it’s the way he uses his eyes to show different emotions of happiness, of sorrow, of love, of courage, and whatnot. When it comes to the ferocious Khilji, it’s beyond words. He just made that character more pleasing than its portrayal in the book. Whenever Ranveer takes up a character, he not only acts it out, he lives it out. At this point we can compare his craft to our very own, complete actor, Mohanlal. Just like Lalettan, Ranveer also does mass movies as well as character cinema with the same vibe and wavelength. He, along with Ayushmann Khurana has been the reason for the transformation of the Bollywood industry into a more creative and versatile one. May him get a lot more amazing projects in years ahead. Waiting for #83, one of his most challenging roles as Kapil Dev.