You might have seen him in Rocket Singh, Band Baaja Baaraat and Bombay Begums. But do you know who this actor is?
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00:00I suddenly felt that oh, I'm actually becoming like a hero of a story at 52, which I found
00:12kind of funny because, you know, I'm like, I would have liked to play this part when
00:16I was 35 or 36, you know, be a leading man in a thing.
00:19Table bed ban jatiye aur office ghar.
00:23Hi, I'm Manish Chaudhary for Brute.
00:25Mujhe anesha se yeh tha ki mujhe actor banna hai life.
00:28Abhi wo hero ho ya villain ho, maine kabhi socha nahi.
00:32But agar aap soche hoon uske baare mein, toh obviously koi bhi young aadmi, koi bhi young
00:36ladka ya ladki yeh hi sochegi that I want to be a, you know, a leading person and it's
00:39always a good thing.
00:40But I always focused on, you know, being an actor and it's quite telling that actually
00:45some of my favorite actors in Hindi cinema have always been people who really didn't
00:50start out as leading men at all.
00:53You know, Balraj Saini was, you know, started off.
00:57He did leading parts later.
00:59You know, Kishore Kumar, who was comedically, I think, pure genius.
01:04He also did great parts.
01:07Amjad Khan did fantastic parts.
01:09Pranab sahib did such fantastic work.
01:11So these guys had such a repertoire of, you know, then Amrish Puri after that, he did
01:15some fantastic work across a range.
01:18So I always liked actors who did a range of work, you know, they could play many different
01:23things.
01:24You know, played so many different parts, kinds of parts.
01:27So I've always been, I think, naturally interested in playing, watching actors who have a wide
01:33range and hence being an actor who also would like to have a wide range in his body of work.
01:39Jab teen saal himmat rakhi hai, toh teen mahine aur sahi.
01:42The funny thing is that Rules and Sochanaatha was shot around the same time and they were,
01:46they released around the same time as well.
01:50Maybe a year apart.
01:52And people really liked those films and people really liked me in it.
01:57And I got no work after that.
01:59Zero.
02:00Not at all.
02:01So I kept wondering, you know, everybody's saying I'm pretty good in these, but why am
02:07I not getting any work, you know?
02:10In 2008, I started auditioning for Rocket Singh, which originally a very established
02:17actor was going to do and then for some reason he didn't want to.
02:21And then they started looking for another actor who they then thought should be fresh
02:24and not seen.
02:26And that process was actually very long.
02:28It started in 2008 and it ended in 2009 and Rocket Singh came out and everybody thought
02:34that was my first film and, you know, I didn't really refute it for some time.
02:39I was like, okay, if that's what you think, let it be.
02:43I was already 40 by then, when Rocket Singh came out, you know.
02:48So yeah, so that's, that's how it was.
02:50And then once Rocket Singh came out, you know, people took me a little more seriously, I
02:55guess.
02:56Unfortunately, Bombay Begums didn't become a commercial success.
03:00It was critically liked very much.
03:02But Arya, on the other hand, just went through the roof.
03:05It became extremely successful, you know, both with the media and with the audience,
03:09which is actually very, very important.
03:12The most important, because that's who we work for, the audience, and if they like it,
03:18it's a great feeling.
03:20So when, you know, when something like that happens and something becomes that successful,
03:27a lot of your, a lot of the stereotyping that you have been fighting against over years,
03:36actually, you start winning that battle to some extent.
03:39Don't underestimate my ability to play dirty.
03:42Once that starts happening, I think people start saying that, oh, no, you know, Manish
03:47can do many other things as well.
03:49I mean, now we are seeing him again as a gangster, but now maybe we should see him as something
03:54else as well.
03:55And that's actually exactly what happened, because my next series that I got was Shurveer.
04:01It was a heroic character, you know.
04:04So I think that was a very exciting moment for me, because I suddenly felt that, oh,
04:11I'm actually becoming like a hero of a story at 52, which I found kind of funny, because,
04:23you know, I'm like, I would have liked to play this part when I was 35 or 36, you know,
04:27be a leading man in a thing, but it sort of happened with Shurveer in a very wonderful
04:34way.
04:35And the funny thing is that it actually happened because of Arya, which is actually a villainous
04:38part that I played.
04:39They say you're the best.
04:41Let's see how true that is.