 "On Sidharth Malhotra's birthday, listing his six finest films from Ek Villain to Shershaah")
When I saw Sidharth Malhotra in Karan Johar’s Student Of The Year I told Karan the young actor reminded me of Mr Bachchan from his Anand days. Initially when he came to Mumbai, he tried his luck as an actor. Malhotra met Anubhav Sinha; he was going to make a film with Malhotra in collaboration with Adlabs. But that didn’t work out, as Sinha got busy with Ra. One. After that, Malhotra told me he started questioning his decision to be an actor. “My parents in Delhi wondered what I was doing with my life. Yahan log aate hain actor bana-neke liye (People come here to be actors). I started assisting Karan Johar on My Name is Khan. People like Abhishek Burman, and Puneet Malhotra assisting at Dharma wanted to be directors. At that time, I never thought Karan would launch me as an actor. Life has a funny way of working out for you.” Malhotra has come a long way since then. He once told me, “I’m just doing films that have a story to tell that I believe in. I grew up watching only good stories on screen. Back home in Delhi, we weren’t regular moviegoers. We were in no way connected to the movie industry. Our connection with the industry was the Bollywood blockbusters. I saw my mother watching movies of Yash Chopra and Amitabh Bachchan. And I grew up in the Shah Rukh Khan era. Now I’m a part of that dream world. I have so much to be grateful for and happy about. So, when I feel that a film not working for me is a setback, I look back with a sense of wonder, and then I’m okay.” Here are the films that prove Malhotra can act. 1. Ek Villain (2014) Though ‘villain’ Ritesh Deshmukh walked away with critical acclaim, Siddharth as the grieving hero packed in a certain mount of florid intensity combined with some terrific stunts. This was one of Malhotra’s earliest successes. Interestingly in his other release Hasee Toh Phasee the same year Malhotra happily allowed Parineeti Chopra to take centrestage. 2. Kapoor & Sons(2016)
Sidharth Malhotra in Shershaah[/caption] The career-changing blockbuster, and one of Amazon Prime Video’s most successful indigenous products, Shershaah is to Malhotra’s career what Deewana was to Shah Rukh Khan and Jaanwar to Akshay Kumar. That turning point where the actor has finally accrued some amount of acceptance. He played the real-life martyr Vikram Batra with full-on earnestness. Vikram Batra’s brother Vishal said to me, “Siddharth met us many times to understand Vikram as a son, a brother and a soldier. He met Mom and Dad. He met our sisters and a lot of Vikram’s comrades. He tried to get into the skin of my brother’s character. I think Siddharth instinctively understood the gravity of his responsibility. He couldn’t afford to slip up. Not when he was portraying someone who means so much to the country. he has put in a lot of hard work to understand Vikram as a character and to play him as honestly as possible. And for him to go to Kargil and shoot there at a height of 2,000 feet …this is not an easy task for a civilian. Of course, it is not the same as what our soldiers faced 22 years ago when they fought the war. But for Sidharth to go down to Kargil and relive what our soldiers did, couldn’t have been easy. I have to give it to him. He’s done a good job. I keep reading how much my brother’s story inspired Sidharth. I hope it inspires other youngsters as well to join the army.”
Subhash K Jha is a Patna-based journalist. He's been writing about Bollywood for long enough to know the industry inside out.