The street smart and cocky ‘Dilli ka launda’ that Ranveer Singh played in his envious debut movie Band Baaja Baaraat (BBB) three years ago was an image that clung to him so bad, it’s taken three years almost to shake it off. But now with Lootera , Ranveer gets to show a side of him that he didn’t know existed. That of the brooder who lets his eyes do all the talking.
But then again, that took a good talking to from the director of this romantic-thriller, Vikramaditya Motwane, for him to realise. Ranveer admits that was a breakthrough moment in the making of the film. Ranveer Singh, in Bangalore to promote Lootera that releases on July 5, is quick to protest his stereotyping. “From my second film onwards itself I have chosen different roles,” says the actor who is now three films old. “Because it’s very easy to get typecast otherwise. People think I’m from Delhi. After BBB, I just got flooded with ‘Delhi boy’ roles. It was a conscious decision then to show people I’m not from Delhi; that it was only an act, and apparently a very convincing one! My research trip for BBB was my second ever to Delhi. They saw me as an uncouth Delhi lad. I’m anything but that. I’m quite an educated Bombay boy.”
Breaking away from one image, Ranveer stepped into his next, with
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But it was a shocking gap for a newbie like him to have between his last release and this.
A challenge it was then, to move from playing a sexy beachboy conman in Ladies Vs to a conman set in the 1950s. “I’ve always played characters that are loud, with lots of dialogue. Garrulous. But here’s a guy who stays within himself. He doesn’t react strongly to anything, doesn’t express too much. Feels things but has no gestures to play with. That is difficult for me to do”
At a week-long workshop before starting the shoot, sometime on day four, he says he gave up. “I picked a plastic chair and banged it on the floor and told the director ‘You picked the wrong guy. I can’t wrap my head around this. Let’s abandon this. I quit.’ Vikram sat me down and said things that changed me as a person. It was a breakthrough for me. He said ‘In all my interactions I know you have that depth to you as a person, that
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With so much talk of ‘looks’ in Bollywood, is Ranveer a body conscious person? “Ya, and the reason is that I was a little overweight till I was 14. I was chubby and became the token ‘fat guy’ in class and had that complex to deal with.” Ranveer claims that he’s one of those actors who loves to change his physicality according to the part. “For Gunday I have to build up muscle because I’m a menacing thug, for Ram Leela I had to be the heartthrob and get all sexy, and go back to being a boy for Kill Dill . Before clothes, hair and makeup come into the picture, it’s your own physicality that matters.”