Entertainment
Ayushmaan Khurana is finally breathing a sigh of relief as Dum Laga Ke Haisa seems to have reestablished the faith in his acting after a series of failures at the box-office...
Updated : Mar 07, 2015, 06:20 AM IST
As a multi faceted personality, Ayushmaan Khurana has done it all – be it acting, singing or anchoring a TV show. His debut film, Vicky Donor turned out to be a huge success and catapulted him to the elite league. However, that very film is what dragged him down as well because the parameters for judging success were always as high as his debut film. With Dum Laga Ke Haisa, he has not only proved his worth but also made his parents proud. Excerpts from the conversation.
Your debut film, Vicky Donor was a huge hit but you couldn't make the mark with your other films after that. Was it disappointing?
I have been rejected in most auditions so I am immune to success and failure. I also believe that success is a very lousy teacher. You learn a lot from your failures. Apart from that, you learn a lot from every film. Your craft just improves with every film and I am just glad I did all those films. It was the curse of the first benchmark film, because the debut film was so big that it reached a cult status. It was a film made on RS 4 crores and it reached Rs 50 crores. That's why I think the expectations were so high! But after the last film (Bewakoofiyan), I think the expectations weren't there at all! (Laughs)
Did you ever have moments of self-doubt in the period that your films weren't doing well?
Till the time your craft is being appreciated, there can't be any self-doubt. You can doubt your decisions for sure but you cannot doubt your craft. I have been doing this – music and theatre since childhood. So there was no self-doubt for sure. I always believed in myself.
Your choices in terms of films have been slightly off-beat. Is it a conscious decision to not do the kind of films that everyone is doing?
I don't know! Bewakoofiyan was a conventional rom-com but apart from that, every film was unconventional. Sometimes, you get close to the character and choose scripts with roles that are similar to you in real life as well. Dum Laga Ke Haisa is also different as I had to speak a language I didn't really know. There is this guy Mahesh in the film who was sent to Gujarat so I used to just eat with him, converse with him and copy his accent so that is how I picked up the accent. I can grasp languages easily.
You think this is one movie that has made you Ayushmaan Khurana beyond Vicky Donor because until now, VD was the only film that did really well.
Of course. Definitely and thank God for that. Nautanki Saala was a hit but the perception was that it didn't do well. My father thinks this is bigger than Vicky Donor and my mother thinks I have surpassed my debut film as well. I have grown a lot in this film for sure. It is also progressive like my debut film was, though in its own way. It speaks about woman emancipation. It is also about a guy who is very complex. As a nation, we have not really spoken about male emancipation. And this film talks about it.
How do you manage to juggle both singing as well as acting?
I used to unwind with music when I was anchoring on television but now it has become a part of my profession. So if your passion is your profession, nothing can beat that. You are very lucky and fortunate that whatever comes naturally to you, you are doing it to earn a living. Not many people have the liberty of saying that. Every person who is an actor or an artist, is following that passion and you are getting paid to follow that, then you are just lucky.