3 promising actors to watch out for in Bollywood

No two ways about it, they are here to stay. Three actors, with differing personalities and acting styles, have been making slow-but-steady inroads into the Bollywood acting club. If there's a common point between Vikrant Massey, Vicky Kaushal and Ali Fazal, it's the fact that they have been on the scene for almost half a decade now. They have been seen in a wide range of films - ranging from the mundane to the memorable - and are now on the cusp of broader recognition.
Indeed, Vikrant Massey has emerged as the poster boy of indie cinema, which, hopefully, will not come in the way of his snagging assignments in the cash-fuelled mainstream products. The 30-year-old, like Shah Rukh Khan and Sushant Singh Rajput, earned his spurs with several television series, the most notable ones among them being Balika Vadhu and Qubool Hai.
With his vulnerable, boyish face, Vikrant has featured in roles that commensurate to his personality in big-budget entertainers like Vikramaditya Motwane's Lootera, Zoya Akhtar's Dil Dhadakne Do and Mohit Suri's Half Girlfriend. He did make his presence felt in those, but it's in indie cinema that he has excelled, turning out a performance that called for tremendous emotional complexity in the Konkona Sen Sharma-directed A Death in the Gunj.
Gamely, he has participated in four short films and in the recently-released Lipstick Under My Burkha. Initially, the bold, cause-centric film was banned since the Censors came up with the curious reason that it was excessively "lady-oriented".
Apart from his acting calibre, Vikrant also happens to be a choreographer and a ballet dancer trained by Shiamak Davar. He's quite an unusual suspect, then, in the Bollywood firmament, the actor to go to for emotively powerhouse performances. Whether he can expand his career remains to be evidenced. Like it or not, it's imperative nowadays to stay in the news and adopt PR gameplans. So far, he has been seen in and heard of in the media only sporadically.
The youngest of the trio, 29-year-old Vicky Kaushal, has also kept a low-profile despite the unqualified praise lavished upon him by critics for his performance in the role of an underprivileged student in Neeraj Ghaywan's Masaan, a couple of years ago. Vicky is achingly shy of media interaction. Strange that, since he's the son of Shyam Kaushal, the ever-affable action director of scores of blockbusters. On Facebook, the doting dad frequently posts photos of awards won by Vicky and updates on his career.
The update is that Vicky has been pencilled in for a key role in Rajkumar Hirani's Sanjay Dutt biopic, and in a lead role opposite Alia Bhatt in Raazi to be directed by Meghna Gulzar. And to think the actor had once aspired to become an electronics and telecommunications engineer! Inexorably, though, he diverted to film direction serving as an assistant to Anurag Kashyap in Gangs of Wasseypur. "Secretly perhaps, he longed to be an actor," his father explains. "I was quite flabbergasted that he wanted to switch lanes." He followed it up with lead roles in Neeraj Ghaywan's Masaan, and Mozez Singh's Zubaan, in which he played a wannabe singer challenged by a speech defect.
Zubaan tanked. So did Anurag Kashyap's Raman Raghav 2.0, in which Vicky portrayed a tough cop (alas, unconvincingly) on the track of a serial killer enacted by Nawazuddin Siddiqui. Gratifyingly, Vicky has managed to survive the two setbacks and is acknowledged as an actor who's infallibly punctual at location and studio shoots, besides approaching the characters assigned to him with a blend of spontaneity and study.
Over to Ali Fazal's big ticket to stardom: the British-Indian co-production Victoria & Abdul, directed by Stephen Frears. In the story of an unlikely friendship that develops between Queen Victoria and an Indian servant called Abdul Karim, Ali stars alongside Oscar winner Judi Dench.
The 30-year-old Ali, born in Lucknow, is a graduate in Economics from Mumbai's St Xavier's college. At a time when he was acting in stage plays, Ali was selected for a supporting part in Rajkumar Hirani's 3 Idiots.
Then began a period of struggle to find a toehold in show business. Ali was noticed in Fukrey and Happy Bhag Jayegi, but that was it. A lead role in Bobby Jasoos, with Vidya Balan in the title role, was a commercial as well as critical no-no. A cameo in Hollywood's Furious 7, as well as appearances in the offbeat Sonali Cable and the horror flick Khamoshiyan weren't exactly bright spots in his career.
Now with Fukrey Returns and, more importantly, Victoria & Abdul up his sleeve, Ali Fazal is poised to make that great leap forward to stardom. Fingers tightly crossed.
wknd@khaleejtimes.com