“The illusion of the work was different than the reality.” In this freewheeling chat with Brut India, actor Vijay Varma speaks about life before and after he made it to the movies.
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00:00I arranged for the fees from a friend. I got monthly allowances from my ex-girlfriend.
00:09I had the entire plan hatched and I just ran away from home.
00:16Hi, I'm Vijay Verma for Brute.
00:23My father, although he doesn't really know English too well, but he only preferred watching
00:30English films. He had this thing that he would take us to movie halls, to theatres to make
00:37us watch all Indira Jones, Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, Jet Li, Van Damme, all these actioners.
00:47He used to enjoy watching them. He never once took me to watch any Bollywood film. He actually
00:54didn't like Bollywood films. So Bollywood films were something that my mom and my sister
00:59were into. But I wasn't into it. I liked what my father was showing me.
01:08I was a very peaceful rebel. Almost like a saintly approach to rebellion. Because everything
01:20was given to me the way I wanted it. Even my father was like, don't point wasting your
01:28time going to college. Education is not for us, we are businessmen. He had that saying
01:37that a job is a job. Until I failed at several jobs, and then I finally decided I want to
01:44do it, it's going to be a no from him. Because every time anybody says in a set up which
01:51doesn't understand cinema or movie making or films or actors, they'll be like, two Salman
01:56Khanpuri bansakta hai. So of course that happened and he said the same thing. But then
02:05I think I was a very meticulous rebel. I got myself a seat at a very good film school in
02:12India, FTII Pune. I arranged for the fees from a friend. I got monthly allowances from
02:20my ex-girlfriend. I had the entire plan hatched and then I just ran away from it. It was a very
02:27well planned elope or escape. So my father was the main threat to that plan. So we kept him in
02:40the dark. And my mom and my sister and my brother and everybody knew, including 30 people who came
02:46to see me off at the railway station. I made that one phone call before I realized that I'm
02:50going for one year only. And he said, you better leave before I see your face. So I'm like, yay!
02:57I realized that acting that I thought is the job that I want to do is something completely
03:08different than the one that I imagined it to be. In my theatre school, the first couple of months,
03:14they just made me clean the floor, do duck walks, sit in silence, meditate. No dialogue, nothing.
03:24So I figured that this is a lot of work. It's not like you go in front of the camera and somebody
03:30blows air at you and your hair flies and you look pretty. You say a dialogue. The illusion of the
03:36work was different than the reality. When I came to Bombay, I was ready as an actor to a certain
03:42degree. But I wasn't ready for Bombay because it's just like, you could really like spend four
03:49days doing nothing in a film institute. But you can't spend one evening in Bombay without being
03:54a little bit productive. So that threw me off, like I need to work. And then the pursuit of work started.
04:00I didn't take it too well. I felt like, you don't know where I went, I fit, you know. So it was just like, I must be fitting some place.
04:16Like, I go to this audition, they say, you're not fit. Then another place, they say, you're not fit. I'm like, and then I started asking them why.
04:24And they're like, you're looking younger, you're looking older for the part. I'm like, you're looking not this for the part, not that for the part.
04:30After a month of doing that, going through that audition, I just decided I won't test auditions, I won't do auditions anymore.
04:37So I started doing theatre in Bombay. I worked with Mr. Tom Walter for close to a year and a half.
04:44First time I did an English play, I learned English from the beginning. I didn't get anything, no money, nothing.
04:53I still used to get support from family. I was just happy that I don't have to go through the ordeal of being rejected every other day.
05:09I got called by the casting agent and they said, we want to test you for a part. And I was at that stage in life when I was the lowest.
05:17Because I was waiting for one of my early films to come out and I had to wait for years before it came out.
05:24And it came and went without a trace. And I did a film in South and that became a huge hit but I was really badly written off by the critics in South.
05:35So I was at the lowest low when this casting call came and I went and I did it.
05:41And in a month's time I had the part. I went through another round with Zoya where she recorded me and then things started to fall in place.
05:54There were several very minor changes that affected me. Not just professionally but gave me a certain kind of confidence, a certain kind of idea about who I am and what I am capable of.
06:17So those were very personal achievements I felt.
06:20You see Mohin coming to the market and saying, wow, wow, what a, what a, wow, what a, what a, wow, wow, what a, what a, what a, what a.