Akshay Kumar 'was never considered a great actor or even a good actor' says Vipul Shah: 'He was just being labelled as an...'

Akshay Kumar is one of the most bankable actors in Bollywood. However, filmmaker Vipul Shah who worked with him in films like Aankhen, Waqt: The Race Against Time, Namastey London, Action Replayy, Singh Is Kinng, and Holiday: A Soldier Is Never Off Duty, says he doesn’t get the credit he deserves, and the actor doesn’t even know of his capabilities as he has much more to officer.

“In my first two films, when I was working with Akshay, I realised here is an actor who himself doesn’t know what he is capable of. He was just being labelled as an action hero, and in that era, he was changing his image by doing comedy films, but people were not taking him seriously. Maybe, he was never considered a great actor or even a good actor by any reviewers, so he also kind of had this ‘I don’t care’ space. But, I thought that he had a lot more to offer," said Vipul Shah while talking to Galatta Plus.

“Well, when you’re working with someone, you get to see how they’re approaching a scene, how easily they can switch. Like, yesterday we were doing a comic scene, and today we’re doing a serious, thriller moment, and he could just jump into it. There was no baggage of what he had done last, and it never broke the character," Shah explained.

“I was seeing that in both the films I worked with him, two completely different characters, and he was just so comfortable doing a lot of things as an actor that nobody really gave him credit for. Then, I realised that nobody, in his entire career, had made him a Punjabi munda," he added.

“He’s a total Punjabi guy at heart and soul, but no one had presented him that way. And that’s what Namaste London was going to do: give him that space to be himself, the Punjabi munda, the carefree, fun-loving guy. He just slipped into the film smooth as silk, because that’s what comes most naturally to him," Shah said.