Face-Timing Sid

Sidharth Malhotra’s acting career has been equal parts deliberate decisions and pure happenstance.

- Kunal Purandare & Angad Singh Thakur

The Mumbai rain is playing hide and seek. The gloomy weather, however, fails to deter children engrossed in a game of cricket on the road leading up to a five-star hotel in Mumbai’s Bandra-Kurla Complex on a Sunday afternoon in July. The hotel’s lobby, too, is a hive of activity. The energy moves on up to a 12th floor suite where, in a room strewn all over with DVDs, a make- up kit and bags of designer clothes, actor Sidharth Malhotra, 31, is wrapping up a photo shoot.

A small coterie of stylists and publicists waits patiently in the suite’s parlour. We’re led into the bedroom to meet him. Malhotra’s dressed in a stark white shirt and coffee brown trousers, and is sporting an overgrown stubble. He greets us with a firm handshake and we settle in beside a large window and start talking about his journey in the film world thus far. Five years and five films after making his acting debut with Student of The Year (2012), the Delhi boy who came to Mumbai nearly a decade ago is seeing his persistence and hard work pay off. His first film of 2016, Kapoor & Sons (Since 1921), was widely appreciated. And though his recently released Baar Baar Dekho received indifferent reviews, with a similarly tepid response at the box-office, there is little doubt that Malhotra is now part of Bollywood’s big league.

However, recognition for his acting talents hasn’t come easy for Malhotra, the son of a former merchant navy captain and a homemaker. His good looks and modelling background may have set him up for a career in films, but those traits also came in the way of him being taken seriously as an actor. There has been a perception shiftwith Kapoor & Sons, though, which provided audiences with a glimpse of his acting potential. “It is one of my endeavours to change that impression… [to ensure] people go beyond my looks,” he tells ForbesLife India, running his fingers through his hair.