The Experimental Lot

Bollywood actors have always gone an extra mile to entertain us. They have always worked very hard and tried to come up with something genuinely different each time. Most of the successful mainstream actors are where they are because of the many challenges they have taken up in the course of their career and worked extremely hard to pull it off. With Shahid Kapoor’s latest release Haider we here take a look at a bunch of those actors who have in the recent past experimented with their looks, roles and characters.

Shahid Kapoor

Playing the role inspired by the character of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, he has put up a completely new look. Shedding the cute, chocolate boy image and going dark and bold is what he has already done with Kminey and R Rajkumar. However, with Haider, Shahid has reached another level. He has got his hair all trimmed off and with those eyes dipped in surma he really looks terrifying. His expressions complete the sync and Shahid looks thrilling.

With this new cinema we could not help wonder how time and again actors have gone and extra mile and tried something greatly experimental only to serve us a platter of quality entertainment. Here is a list of some very interesting experiments our actors have undergone in the recent past –

Priyanka Chopra

In her recent stint as Mary Kom Priyanka Chopra went an extra mile and more. She put in a lot of considerable effort to look like the sensational boxer from North East who has made all of India proud and significantly put India on the world map. Well, it was certainly not easy for the gorgeous lass to undergo those changes. But she has come out with flying colors with this daring experiment.

For Priyanka to look like Mary Kom was a challenge she bravely accepted, needless to say she lived up to it and excelled. Priyanka’s film has come with flying colors. She underwent a lot of make-up everytime before the shoot. Overall she had to not only work on her physical atritbutes, including body and face but also on her accent, body language and behavioural characteristics.

Vidya Balan

In the recent film Bobby Jasoos Vidya Balan donned several different looks including that of a beggar, old man and an astrologer.

She has already established her mettle as an actor but still unstoppable. She is only getting better with time and with every new release establishing herself more strongly. But this is not the first time for Vidya. While she already had a heavy body she dared to gain some 20 kgs more for Ekta Kapoor’s Dirty Picture. To add on weight for a film for an actress who is already criticized for her weight takes a lot of nerve to do. Vidya’s dirty picture did excellent business and yes in that skin too nothing could stop her from looking incredibly desirable and beautiful and making us all go OO-LALA.

This tradition of taking over new personalities is not new to Bollywood. In the recent times there are many actors who have taken up many daring roles and come out with exceptional results. They have surpassed what ordinary people could have otherwise expected. To name some more, from older films, we call recall –

Amitabh Bachan

Amitabh Bachan who played the role of a child in Paa suffering from Progeria, and the son of his real life son Abhishek Bachan. It was a challenge for a sixty something to play the role of a child and even bigger challenge to be able to look like the son of one’s son.  And who could have carried it off better than this legend?

Amir Khan

Amir Khan in his superhit movie Ghajni experimented a lot with his looks. He donned the look of a rich businessman and went on to play a frustrated, psychological patient suffering from short term memory loss. Moreover Amir in the song Behka Main Behka from the same film changed seven looks.  And in his recent Dhoom 3 too he did a similar thing. Amir has also done some experimenting with his looks in the film Fannah in which he played a terrorist. After all he isn’t called Mr. Perfectionist for no reason at all.

Hritik Roshan

Hritik Roshan in Dhoom 2 tried many disguises. Hritik Roshan in the earlier stage of his career also played a mentally challenged boy Rohit in the film Koi Mil Gaya which gave a significant boost to his career.

Shah Rukh Khan

Shah Rukh Khan in Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi played a Punjabi small town common man and simultaneously a crazy wanna be dude too.

It seems like experimental looks is the new in-thing in B-Town. Let us hope we soon get to see many more experiments like these and may our stars keep entertaining us similarly with their daring dos. What is remarkable is that only senior actors have tried such roles as of now and so we can expect the younger lot, the new, fresh talents to try out similar options soon.