ALI FAZAL ON A PATH OF HIS OWN

The cute Bollywood hero. The dapper Hollywood actor. A film producer. A member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The current king on the Iron Throne of Mirzapur. The man of fashion. The man of tashan. A head of gorgeous hair and curious grey matter - Ali Fazal is all of the above and more. But most of all, the 36-year-old is a maverick fashioning his own unique journey, armed with an untested blueprint

- ANANYA GHOSH

I WILL NOT FOLLOW WHERE THE PATH MAY LEAD, BUT I WILL GO WHERE THERE IS NO PATH, AND I WILL LEAVE A TRAIL.

- WIND-WAFTED WILD FLOWERS BY MURIEL STRODE

His Instagram mostly gives out a vibe of a bohemian blithe spirit, high on coffee and life, traversing the world at his own pace. But his is a zippy pace and he has a penchant for the unexplored. A look at his career graph gives you a glimpse of the workhorse behind the man with the goofy smile and cheeky posts.

His last big-screen outing was in Death on the Nile. The 2022 mystery film, directed by Kenneth Branagh, saw him essay a non-South Asian character. In fact, Andrew Pennington, an out-and-out British man, was essayed by Oscar-winning actor George Kennedy in the 1978 John Guillermin adaptation.

The previous year, he grabbed eyeballs with his powerful and nuanced turn as Ipsit Nair in Forget Me Not, a segment in the Netflix anthology on Satyajit Ray's short stories. The year also saw him start a production company, Pushing Buttons Studios, along with his now-wife, Richa Chadha.

His 2023 releases include the Hollywood action thriller, Kandahar. Directed by Ric Roman Waugh, it will see him share screen space with Gerard Butler and is scheduled to hit the theatres on May 26. Then, there is Vishal Bhardwaj's Khufiya, which stars Tabu, Ashish Vidyarthi, Wamiqa Gabbi, along with Ali. Based on Amar Bhushan's espionage novel revolving around the story of a RAW operative, Escape To Nowhere, the movie, will premiere on Netflix later this year. And then there is the much-awaited return of Guddu Bhaiyaa in Mirzapur Season 3, where he is supposed to begin his reign as the new king of the fiefdom.