From making his Bollywood debut with film Love Sex Aur Dhokha in 2010 to now shooting for Rakyesh Omprakash Mehra’s Fanne Khan, actor Rajkummar Rao, being an outsider, has come a long way in the film industry. 

The New Indian Express

In a career spanning 7 years, he played significant roles in films like Ragini MMS, Shaitan, Gangs of Wasseypur – Part 2, Chittagong, Talaash and Kai Po Che!. But his performance in Shahid, however, was a turning point in his life as this got him his first National Film Award for best actor.

Source

Queen. Aligarh. And then, City Lights. 

Success followed him soon after. And he has never looked back since then.

Indian Express

Besides a brilliant historical period drama web series, Bose: Dead or Alive, he gave us hits like Newton and Trapped this year and it’s been raining awards for the 33-year-old actor. 

Indian Express

For someone who doesn’t belong to the industry, made all of this look like a cake walk. But, that is far from true. Stories of success are usually riddled with failures, many failures. 

According to a report filed by the Indian Express, the actor recently opened up about his struggling days in an interview and said that he got rejected a few times based on how he looked and the colour of his skin. 

“I would meet people and they would give excuses on why they can’t cast me – sometimes because of my complexion and sometimes because of not being muscular enough.” 

Further, Rao also spoke about things he did to survive in the city of dreams, Mumbai. 

He says,

“I knew, it would be a lot of struggle for me to crack it in the industry because its not easy as many people come every day to Mumbai to follow their passion. I gave hundreds of auditions. I have done many advertisements just to survive, because Bombay is an expensive city.” 

A true inspiration, isn’t he?

Besides Anil Kapoor, Aishwarya Rai starrer Fanne Khan, Hansal Mehta’s Omerta and Amar Kaushik’s Chor Nikal Ke Bhaaga opposite Tamannaah Bhatia are now lined up for the actor for the year 2018 and we wish him luck!