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Published: Jul 29, 2018 | Shibaji Roychoudhury
For decades, audiences have loved watching the quintessential Bollywood hero on the big-screen singing songs with his heroine, dancing around the trees and most importantly beating bad guys to a pulp with his bare hands. Though Bollywood may have evolved to a large extent into more content driven films compared to the larger-than-life hero stories, but the Bollywood masala films still mint the most money at the box-office.However, critically-acclaimed actor Rajkummar Rao, who has not only won a National Film Award for Best Actor (Shahid) but also loved by fans for his role Pritam Vidrohi in Bareilly Ki Barfi (2017), reveals that these Bollywood masala films are not for him and he doesn't connect with roles that depict a larger-than-life hero' character.In an exclusive interview with ZOOMTV.com, we asked Rajkummar Rao why he only does common man, grounded and son of the soil kind of roles and not play larger-than-life characters on the big-screen? This is what the Fanney Khan actor had to say
"I don't connect with such roles. There is no intrigue about such characters who cannot exist in real life. Also the audiences have evolved and they too want to see stories told which they can connect with, which are common and one can relate to. In fact, I don't even enjoy watching these kind of Bollywood masala films. May be someday down the line, I too might change my mind and feel like doing one of these, but not at this point in my career,
In fact, Rajkummar Rao also has an issue with male actors being called hero' in the industry and by fans at large. Raj feels it is a disservice to call an actor a hero because they aren't doing anything heroic in their lives. Rather the people who make a difference in society and make life better for others are the real heroes and the term should be used only for them.
"We are actors not heroes, this is our profession, our work, our livelihood. People should stop calling actors heroes. The soldiers standing guard at the borders of our country, protecting us from the enemy, they should be called heroes. The people who have commited their lives to helping others, they are heroes. Those who go out of their way to make the society a better place, they are hero, not us. We are just doing our job and getting paid, nothing heroic about that!
Meanwhile, Fanney Khan also stars Anil Kapoor, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, Pihu Sand, Divya Dutta among others.
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