When we talk about rising superstars of Bollywood, we generally point to the likes of Varun Dhawan (an astonishing number of 10 consecutive hits and a 100% success rate), Ranveer Singh and Ranbir Kapoor (true blue superstars) or someone like a Tiger Shroff or Karthik Aryan, who are slowly and steadily building their resumes as big box office draws. But let’s talk about the stars who began their careers as ‘character actors’, but are now on the verge of becoming superstars.
With the recent success of ‘Stree’ (or more like a monstrous success), Rajkummar Rao has finally announced his arrival as an actor who can balance out both commercial and parallel cinema with ease. The critical and commercial success of ‘Stree’ has taken his career to new heights whereas films such as ‘Omerta’ and ‘Trapped’ still keep him grounded in reality and provide him with difficult parts to play. His collaborations with Hansal Mehta, who gave him his first leading role in the biographical drama ‘Shahid’ (in a national award-winning performance), has given him much acclaim from the critics, while also making him an actor to look out for. These parts were followed by some great supporting parts in films like ‘Bareilly ki Barfi’, which provided him with his first taste of box office success. Then came his career best, in terms of his performance as well as the quality of film, ‘Newton’ – his first solo box office hit. There’s no looking back for Rajkummar now as he’s in a phase of his career where he can play complex parts in interesting films while being assured that the audience trust him with his choices.
To simply say that ‘Vicky Kaushal is a promising actor’ would be an understatement. The variety of roles he has played in his short career is amazing, to say the least. Starting from a minor role in the mega debacle ‘Bombay Velvet’ to playing one of the main characters in the beautiful ‘Masaan’, Vicky showed immense promise and likability. But then, he turned the tables by starring in ‘Raman Raghav 2.0’ as a drug addicted cop which was by far one of the most disturbing portrayal of a cop on screen. Fantastic performances in these films led him to some supporting roles in films such as ‘Raazi’ and ‘Sanju’, which proved to be the game changers in his career. He also starred as the lead in the first Netflix India original ‘Love per sq foot’. His future line up of films show much promise and he can easily be called as the next breakout star of Bollywood.
Though these two are yet to achieve the kind of success the other next gen superstars have, it’s safe to say that they are going to have the most memorable performances in any of the movies they star in, as they never cared about screen time in the first place. They are truly, and indeed, the alternate next gen superstars of Bollywood.