It's no secret that the journey of a Bollywood film star is one filled with hurdles. While some stars choose to ignore the past, a few try to acknowledge it. Actor Sidharth Malhotra recently spoke to a leading entertainment media portal about his struggling days as an actor. When he was asked if it was difficult to go through the journey alone as his family was in Delhi, he said, "Obviously. I came from a very comfortable background. It was difficult for me to deal with small things on many days. I would break down on days, and feel really low. But I never thought of going back because I had to prove a point to myself first and then everyone else that I could do this."
Talking about becoming an assistant director in Karan Johar's films, he said, "Yes, I was lucky enough to meet a friend who introduced me to the concept of assistant direction. I knew this was the job I wanted to have, if I wanted to be a Hindi film actor. It gave me a chance to be close to the cameras, the actors and see how things work. That was one of the most interesting decisions I took. I used to visit offices of production houses, and people thought I was there to audition and I would ask for ‘assistant direction’ waale jobs instead. It worked."
When asked if 'My Name Is Khan' was his first film as an AD, he said, "No, a lot of people don’t know this. But I worked for a bit in 'Dostana', too. But yes, 'My Name Is Khan' was the best film school I could go to. Then, I was lucky because I got to audition for 'Student Of The Year' (SOTY) and everything fell into place."
Talking about rejections before 'SOTY', he stated, "That time, to survive, I had to give a lot of TV auditions. And it isn’t the most heartening sign when you have 150 people, all dressed up similarly, standing in a line for auditions. Then someone would come and ask me to say something random like, ‘Naam bolo,’ in a weird way. It was like a bloody jail where you have to say your name, number and act out something. Because half of us were clueless, we never got those jobs. People used to ask me to do some stupid, imaginary car-driving, or enact some lines or talk in some weird accent."
When asked what the worst part about auditions was, he said, "(Pauses) At auditions, they make you feel terribly small and unimportant. It makes you feel that aapke jaise sau log aur hai. That’s why I digressed and became an assistant director. It was a very negative environment. It didn’t help me grow and kept me in the same loop."
Talking about getting out at some point, he said, "Yes, I realised that I can’t waste my time giving auditions for TV and ads because my final goal was to work in films. Then, I got lucky because I got the job as an AD, and the rest is history..."
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Credits: DNA
