A prince among men: Rajkummar Rao

Rajkummar Rao / X/Rajkummar Rao

There are stars and there are actors, both usually stay in their separate universe, not wanting to mix things up but there are times when the lines get blurred. Though it is far easier for the former to morph into the latter, there are times when the latter surpasses the former. Rare as it is, it never fails to make the headlines. One such headlining star is Rajkummar Rao.

The man turned the story around for himself and how. With films like Mr and Mrs Mahi, Srikanth being applauded, and Stree 2 breaking  records, Rajkummar Rao is on a roll as always. 

Deaf to detractors

There was once when Shabana Azmi met the likes of Naseeruddin Shah and Om Puri and professed that they would never make Bollywood actors, though Azmi didn’t really take any personal interest in the life of Rajkummar Rao, there were many others who not so subtly told him the same thing and asked him not to keep his hopes too high, especially not to be a lead actor ever. 

But when he bagged LSD (Dibaker Bannerjee’s Love Sex Aur Dhoka), Rajkummar gave it his best. It might not have been the romance every guy hoped to debut with, but it was more than he had prayed for… it got him the eyeballs and even Ragini MMS. The film that almost typecasted him in the role of the creep who records his women intimately for his own greed.

But a chameleon like Rajkummar could not be typecast. With movies like Talaash, Gangs of Wasseypur and then Shahid, the 'creep' turned out to be mainstream hero material, that too, in just 2 years from his first release.

Success was almost never his

As we had established, no one auditioned him for lead parts. He was told he didn’t have the face for it, nor did he have the six pack abs that were considered a prerequisite for main- leads then. So Rajkummar did the only thing he could think of, he begged for a chance. 

He called and he called, and he called some more, he got in touch with every casting director he could think of, till one decided to relent and give him a part That’s exactly how he got LSD, and even Gangs of Wasseypur but calls were not getting him Shahid and he wanted the part more than anything. So he landed up at Hansal Mehta’s office requesting him for 2 minutes of his time. Those 2 minutes got him the role of his lifetime. 

Clearly, R in Rajkummar is for relentless pursuit of one’s dreams. “It is not easy for a child whose father is a simple government officer, with no relatives in the industry to even dream of becoming an actor,” Rajkummar was quoted saying, and “when you don’t have anything, you cannot have an ego either”.

Drudgery of dreaming big
Coming from a humble background, most kids are merely trying to improve their grades and eventually, their circumstances, but Rajkummar was a star even when he was in school. A gold medalist in martial arts, he was a dancer and athlete that made him fairly popular in school. 

He had girls who were in love with him, even back then. Some wrote letters to him confessing their love too, but while he was enjoying the popularity in school, his family was struggling to make ends meet. Even paying for his education was tough, but his teachers would not let their favorite boy miss a year. His teachers actually pooled together resources and paid his fees for two whole years. 

While his journey was a struggle, it was nothing that he wasn’t prepared for… Money was so scarce that Rajkummar would cycle for 30 kilometers from Gurgaon to Delhi for auditions, when he landed in Mumbai in 2008, graduating from FTII the going got tougher. He rented a small apartment with other boys, but they didn’t know how they would gather enough for the rent even. There were times when he had just INR 18 (US$ 0.21) in his bank with no idea where his next paycheck will come from….

Movies were all that he ever wanted to do… “At FTII we became a family, the bunch of us who graduated would take care of each other. None of us knew what the future had in store for us but we had each other. I had a friend called Vinod, we both had bikes, and would ride from the suburbs to town to audition, with the pollution caking our faces. When we would reach, we would each spray the other with gulab jal (rose water) dust ourselves off, and do each other’s hair the best that we could, and say we are good enough to go audition for lead parts.”

From gulab jal days to botox

Recently there was a lot of hoopla regarding Rajkummar Rao going under the knife, the man kept saying he hasn’t got surgery but no one believed him. In an interview, when asked Rajkummar remembered the days when a simple spray of rose water was enough to boost his confidence but the industry did fill his mind with a few insecurities. 
He was time and again told that his was not a ‘main man’ face, which had him go for fillers to help with his face structure hut surgery is something Rajkummar wants to stay away from. He does say that if a little tweak here and there helps boost your confidence, there is no harm but to each his own.

He tweaked his name too

Rajkummar Rao was born Rajkumar Yadav-but since the industry already had a Rajpal Yadav who was fairly popular, Raj decided to change his name. It was his mother, who suggested he go with Rajkummar Rao and the actor and his family believe that has made a lot of difference. 
Given Rao and Yadav were both his family names so he was ok to go with either, however, it was his mother who asked him to add the extra ‘m’ in Rajkummar since she had dabbled in numerology earlier. Like every young boy, Rajkummar has been hugely inspired by his mother, whose strength and determination helped change their modest living considerably! 

Even the teachers who paid for his education were an inspiration to Raj, teaching him just how to respect and treat ladies. Being respectful is a norm for Rajkummar, not a choice, "There are times when I have requested a change in scene because I felt it was disrespectful towards women. I never want to be associated with anything like that. I have seen how hard my mother has struggled and how my teachers would come together to teach us and make a difference with education. I cannot take their presence nor their gift for granted.” This huge green flag is what attracted Patralekha to him in the first place.
 

Rajkummar Rao with his wife and actor Patralekha / Instagram

Love Sets and no Dhoka

Rajkummar Rao has many films lined up in the pipeline and is a hugely successful actor, in comparison his wife hasn’t seen the same magnitude of success. But she has gone on record to say how Rajkummar insists on treating her as an equal even as he holds her up on a pedestal. When Patralekha’s father passed away, Raj took over as the man of the house and has never let them feel lost.

Movies in motion

Currently the man is being lauded for his role in Srikanth, which he ably juggled with a commercial film like Stree 2 and so on…
Ask him if he is ready to juggle fatherhood as well, he promptly says that should be only and only Patralekha’s decision. Now if that does not make him a green flag, what does?