Bollywood actors have time and again gone out of their ways to portray a real life character on screen...
We've all heard of the school of method acting. Robert De Niro does it. Leonardo DiCaprio does it. Even these Bollywood stars have done it. Here are the 8 times Bollywood stars went all out to portray a real life character for a movie:
1. Sushant Singh Rajput as MS Dhoni (MS Dhoni: The Untold Story): While it wasn't that hard for Rajput to adopt Dhoni's dialect and look, as they both hailed from the same geographic part of India, it was adopting the cricketing legend's playing style that was the real challenge. Rajput would train for at least 4 hours every morning, practising his batting and wicket keeping skills. He was professionally coached on how to adopt Dhoni's mannerisms and body language by scientifically analysing his style and continually observing them. In fact, when the filming began, Rajput even suffered a hairline fracture after performing Dhoni's signature 'helicopter shot', which he practised around 200-300 times a day.
2. Randeep Hooda as Sarabjit Singh (Sarbjit): The actor portrayed the Indian man sentenced to death by Pakistan so convincingly that it gave us chills. A big reason for that was his transformation for the role. In the first part of the movie, Hooda was fit and muscular as he always is. But as soon as he was thrown into jail, his skin starts to sag, his ribs start poking out, his teeth become jagged, his voice cracks and he looks like the ghost of what he once was. Hooda lost 18 kgs in 28 days to pull off looking like the prisoner. Let's not forget the amount of mental trauma he must've gone through portraying such an intense character.
3. Priyanka Chopra as Mary Kom (Mary Kom): Priyanka Chopra may not have looked the part of the Olympic medal winning boxer, but she did considerably bulk up for the role. In three months, Chopra did intense workouts and diet control in order to build muscle and learn the proper techniques of boxing. Then she trained with Kom's coaches to adopt her style of throwing punches. The actress also had to endure all her training and work out for the movie with her father having passed away four days before filming began. Chopra had to fight against professional boxers in the movie, which meant that she had to nail her training or get hurt. And she did get hurt. A lot.
4. Aamir Khan as Mahavir Singh Phogat (Dangal): Khan goes the Sarbjit route, but to a much greater degree. He first appears in the film as a 20 year old wrestling champion in probably the best shape of his career with bulging biceps and shirts too tight to fit. And for the remaining majority of the film, he ends up gaining 30 kgs to play the 60 year old Phogat. Aamir made sure that he developed a huge tummy to lug around and weighed 85 kg by gaining 9% fat. And with all that extra weight he was carrying around, he still had to wrestle with his daughters. Aamir Khan has been known to completely immerse himself in his roles. Physically speaking, Dangal is his biggest transformation yet.
5. Vidya Balan as Silk Smitha (The Dirty Picture): The usually simple and religious Balan not only had to physically change herself for the role, but had to undergo an entire personality switch for it. To portray the sensual character of the erotic south actress Silk Smitha, Balan had to shed her good-girl image in favour of sex symbol material. Not only that, the actress had to lose and then gain weight at very quick intervals to keep up with the various stages of Smitha's life, from her beginnings to her peak to her downfall. Balan also had to adopt a deeper voice for the entirety of the movie to portray essentially two characters on screen, shy and naive at one point, cunning and seductive at the other.
6. Rajkummar Rao as Shahid Azmi (Shahid): Rajkummar Rao may not have had to undergo a major physical change to portray the controversial lawyer, but he did see himself transform from a Bollywood actor to a militant trainee to a prisoner to a high-profile lawyer. The amount of character roles and personality switches the actor adopts in the movie showcases how versatile Rao really is and symbolise his abandonment of his real personality, where we have no idea which Shahid we see on screen is the real Shahid or, for that matter, the real Rajkummar Rao.
7. Farhan Akhtar as Milkha Singh (Bhaag Milkha Bhaag): To portray the 'Flying Sikh', Farhan Akhtar underwent intensive physical training to go from lean to buff to Adonis level within the span of the movie. Farhan Akhtar was never one of the bulkiest stars in Bollywood and never really had abs to show off and was more of an everyday man. But in this particular movie, Akhtar made sure to go all out to attain a God-like physique (we're looking at you, Chris Hemsworth) and properly balance his intense training with dialect coaching and filming for the movie.
8. Ranbir Kapoor as Sanjay Dutt (Untitled Sanjay Dutt Biopic): As the latest leading man to recreate himself for a biopic, Ranbir Kapoor has been making rounds on the media for the way he has transformed himself for his role, going from the lean and svelte Dutt in the beginning of his career to beefing up to portray Dutt in the later stages of his life, to adopting the clothing style, mannerisms and facial hair that Dutt sports. He even adopts Dutt's style in his daily life just so he can keep up with his character.
(All images via: YouTube Screengrab)
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 "Bollywood, Sushant Singh Rajput, MS Dhoni: The Untold Story, Randeep Hooda, Sarabjit Singh, Sarbjit, Priyanka Chopra, Mary Kom,")
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