After doing supporting roles over the last few years, and finding success in ensemble projects like Black Warrant, Rahul Bhat finally had a release as a leading man recently with Kennedy. The film was stuck for release for three years before it finally made its way to OTT. But the wait didn’t bother Rahul Bhat as he is used to be patient. Right after making his fim debut in 2003, the actor took a decade long break from acting, and he opens up on what he did during that time.
“I was doing too much maza and I felt like now I need to be serious, and that that has to change,” he quips, adding, “Early in my life I realised that I need to prepare a lot. I feel that any when an actor takes any time gap, that is actually very important. It’s not what happens between action and cut. An actor becomes whatever he is before action, with what he has done when he was not doing anything. These aspiring actors today spend 70-80% of their time in chasing work, meeting people. They spend very less time in preparing themselves, reading history and literature. Majority of an actor’s time should go in that so that when you finally get work, you are ready for it. That preparation is what I was doing through those 10 years.”
Watch the full chat with Rahul Bhat here:
It was eventually filmmaker-actor Anurag Kashyap who called him and gave him the 2013 film Ugly to make his return. Ask him if it was the lack of work that kept him away during those 10 years and Rahul says, “The phone was always ringing for me. It never stopped but the right call was not coming, which I wanted. I was waiting for the right call. When I was doing (the daily soap) Heena every day, I could have done 100 more shows. I was being offered every other show in the country that time.”
He adds, “I started my career as supermodel, then I went to TV, became very successful there then after that, I came to cinema and my films didn’t do well. But it was strange that people wanted to cast me even then. Many films came to me, but I realised that I need to prepare more. I realise that I am not ready, I need to do something else. And sometimes it can be a bad decision, but sometimes it can be good. If I would not have taken that break and I would not have prepared, I don’t think I would have seen the staircase of Cannes. I don’t think that I would have been the part of films that I am right now. I might have been a fairly okay success but I couldn’t have been this and isme alag tarah ka satisfaction aur khushi hai.”