It's been a decade since Vidyut Jammwal began acting in films. How did a child who was fascinated by Kalaripayattu reach where he is today? Jammwal reveals it all in this candid interview with Brut.
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00:00How we play with toys, I was playing with swords and sticks.
00:05You don't need to be somebody's son to be a star.
00:09You need to be somebody's son, but not somebody from Bollywood.
00:30With me, I was, like how we play with toys, I was playing with swords and sticks.
00:43Because when you don't know that they can hurt you, they will not hurt you.
00:47When you're not so aware of being careful, it will not bother you at all.
00:52So for me, playing with a sword or playing with a stick, nobody stopped me saying, oh,
00:56it might hurt you.
00:57But a lot of things that a lot of people didn't do, by the time I was nine, I could do a lot
01:01of things that people couldn't do.
01:04Like, for example, people could tell you that a boy of plus five could tell you what is
01:118-5, 8-5 equals to 40.
01:16I couldn't really do it very well, but I could tell you that if I press over here, you might
01:21get a concussion or you might just faint.
01:25And if you just press over here, you might just heal yourself.
01:29I knew about the pituitary gland.
01:31I knew about all the thyroid, the hypothalamus.
01:35I was studying that without really being told that this is going to be a part of your curriculum
01:39much later in life.
01:40So when I was learning the healing process, like if I was training with a sword and if
01:45I cut myself, I knew that there are no stitches really required.
01:49You could just use haldi, a lot of it, and the blood's going to stop.
01:52So in Kalaripayattu, they don't teach you about only fighting or hitting or killing
01:56people.
01:57They teach you how to heal first.
01:58Because Kalaripayattu is about healing people rather than hurting them.
02:07It was an ambition that somehow I have to make sure that everybody in this world knows
02:11about Kalaripayattu and really that's how the journey started.
02:14I knew I have to get into movies and I want to do action.
02:17It didn't matter whether I was a hero, I was a villain, I was a stuntman.
02:21It really didn't matter.
02:22But I just wanted to do action and tell everybody that this is what I do.
02:30There were roles where you couldn't even see me.
02:32I was one of the bad guys.
02:35But I really did everything that was meant to be done.
02:38And the journey kept moving, moving from a stuntman to a little bad guy, to a better
02:44bad guy, to the worst guy, to being the villain.
02:49Honestly, I got to know this world struggle only when I came to Bombay.
02:53I didn't know it existed.
02:55For a martial artist, when I do a somersault or I do a kick, I have failed a thousand times
03:01before I really got it right.
03:03So if that is the struggle, then every human being has to go through it.
03:07But when I came to Bombay and they said, Oh my God, there's a lot of struggle.
03:10You got to be careful.
03:11You got to be wise.
03:12I just didn't understand what it meant.
03:19I was not the leading villain in the movies.
03:23So every time I came on the set and they said, Okay, what can you do?
03:26So like all this, they're like, Okay, what do you think you want to do here?
03:30So I was like, I think this will make it look really nice.
03:33So every time I saw the screen, I was like, Wow, I've done a good job.
03:36And what normally I did at that time, not many people were doing it.
03:41So only I had to do it.
03:42In 2013, when we had Commando 1, before that, there was not a single person who was doing
03:48realistic action of that.
03:51The heroes weren't really doing the stunts.
03:52Some of them were, but not everybody.
03:55When we decided to do Commando 1, the first thing was, I will do everything.
04:00I will choreograph it.
04:01I will make it look different.
04:02I will make them believe that when the hero does it, he really does it.
04:06When he punches, he really punches.
04:08And that's how we started.
04:13So the Jackie Chan Awards are the Oscars of action.
04:18It's a great feeling.
04:19First of all, Jackie Chan is somebody who everybody knows.
04:21When you meet the legend himself, you know why he's a legend.
04:26It was a great feeling.
04:27For me, it was a matter of great pride because when he called me up on the stage and they
04:32said, Vidyut Jambwal, India, Kalaripayattu, for me, it was a bigger high than anything
04:37that I've experienced.
04:38Because first of all, they got it right, Kalaripayattu.
04:41And the Chinese know that this man, Bodhidharma, who moved from the south of India into China,
04:48started the Shaolin Temple, started the Zen philosophy, is an Indian guy.
04:53So for me, it's a matter of great pride when somebody acknowledges that was my ambition
04:57and I felt very proud that I did something for the country.
05:05So I used to do a lot of self-defense workshops.
05:09I used to travel to different cities and I want to really do this now because nothing
05:13has changed.
05:15The number of rape cases are exactly the same.
05:17We create a lot of brouhaha about, oh my God, this should not happen.
05:20Oh my God.
05:22Everybody gets together.
05:24Then the rape victims get caught and then everybody forgets.
05:29What we need to do is we need to equip our women, our men to be better people.
05:34And that's what I want to do now.
05:35I want to start these self-defense classes.
05:37I want to travel the whole country.
05:39I want to travel the world, talking about self-defense, making them aware how to get
05:43out of it.
05:48It's been amazing.
05:49You think of something and then when you live that something, there's not a bigger experience
05:55than that.
05:56It's like, I want to go to Bombay.
06:02The moment you land into the city and you're like, wow, tick.
06:06I wish I had a small role in an advertisement.
06:12And then you get it and you tick mark it.
06:14It's a dream.
06:15Keep living it.
06:16Make it very small.
06:17Step by step.
06:18People want to just jump.
06:19So these 10 years have been step by step and incredible.
06:23I haven't lost a single moment saying, oh, this has not been good.
06:27This has not been bad.
06:29Some people have not been so amazing, but some people have been spectacularly amazing.
06:34Some people just did not help me, but some people just came from anywhere.
06:39You don't need to be somebody's son to be a star.
06:43You need to be somebody's son, but not somebody from Bollywood.