. When did you realise your interest in this field?
My interest and love for the entertainment industry has been since childhood. I got this from my mother as she herself was very creative. Since childhood I’ve participated in many dance competitions, performed in many plays and have received many awards from famous personalities like Daler Mehndi and Kiran Bedi.I hail from a business familyand my parents thought I would carry forward the business .It just happened in Mumbai while watching a film in a cinema hall.That was a moment when I realized that cinema is all I want to do.
I joined AAFT Noida to learn the basics of acting. After completing my acting training from AAFT I moved to Mumbai to live my dreams and I joined Nadira Babbar’s Theatre group. I also took training from renowned NSD directors from Actor Paradise in Delhi. All that hard work paid off and I received a call from a casting director and bagged my first debut film ‘Ye mard Bechara’.
· What about the difficulties and challenges you faced and are still facing?
When I decided to pursue acting as my career, the biggest challenge was how to educate and train myself to become a natural actor because now cinema has completely changed. You can’t fake anything on camera. You have to be in the skin of the character you are playing and do it naturally in order to connect with the audience. So my search for the best acting school started and I joined Barry John acting school in Delhi. After that I did a 2 months course from AAFT Noida where I learned all the basics of acting. After that I went to Mumbai and did theatre with Nadira Babbar’s Mumbai based theatre group called Ekjute and gave an audition along with that. But I wasn’t confident because I felt that I needed to work more on myself and needed a teacher who can carve the natural and expressive Bollywood actor out of me. I came back to Delhi.Many times I felt very low ,’ mera kuch nhi hoga’. But as experienced people say, when the time’s right you’ll be at the right place. A friend of mine suggested I visit Actor’s Paradise institute as the faculty over there was of National School of Drama (NSD). So I visited the institute and there I met. Anuup Thapa. I started my training under his guidance and he carved the actor out of me. I gained confidence and now was ready to work on Bollywood projects. But now the challenge was how to find work and get selected for Bollywood projects.
In fact I gave many auditions but couldn’t get selected but I didn’t lose hope. One day I got a call for a movie audition going on in Delhi. I went for the audition and did the best I could. Hardwork always pays off and I got a confirmation call that I’ll be doing a parallel lead role in the movie named “YE MARD BECHARA”
· How did /do you cope with the challenges?
My secret to cope up in difficult times is very basic. I never lose hope and always stay positive. I always try to find positivity even in negativity. Sometimes I also lose hope and patience. In that time my family boosted me up with all the positivity. My family is the main source of my positive mindset
· Your take on nepotism in this industry?
About nepotism I would like to say that there’s no such thing as nepotism. It all depends on your destiny, talent and hardwork
· What is Success according to you? What are the ingredients of Success to survive in this industry?
For me success is when me and my work start getting recognised, getting back to back projects, people talking about me and my talent and me becoming a famous face
Ingredients of success in this industry is to believe in yourself. One has to believe in him/herself. Keep updating your acting skills according to the changing time and rest leave it all to the god
· What keeps you motivated?
My biggest motivation is my goal and my family. My focus towards achieving my goal keeps me motivated and its my parents dream to see me become a superstar that keeps me focused and motivated
· Tell me something about your upcoming projects?
My upcoming projects after “Ye Mard Bechara” are “Shukradosh” that’ll be releasing next year and a couple of web series.
About Manikk Chaudhry
The young Delhi boy in fact is a very promising actor.He recently made his debut in ‘Ye Mard Bechara’ (Hindi language family-comedy film) directed by Anuup Thapa and produced by Shivam Aggarwal under the banner of 2 Idiot Films & Raw Entertainment and impressed us with his acting skills.
