Wake up, Sid

The inexplicable success of Marjaavaan may just have given Sidharth Malhotra's career a new lease of life

When a clean-cut young man turns into a gangster on screen, your instinctive reaction would be - now, that's a gross piece of miscasting. Yet, strange are the likes and dislikes of the audience, who have thumbed up over-the-top action thriller Marjaavaan, despite the brickbats hurled by reviewers.
An inexplicable hit - given its muddled screenplay, a vapid performance by its leading lady Tara Sutaria and a virtual tsunami of cliches - the film has, however, had one positive payback. It has given its 'hero' a fresh lease of life.
Result: Sidharth Malhotra is back in business. This at a juncture when the 34-year-old former model from Delhi was being written off as a loser by the trade prophets. Quite curiously, though, he seems to connect with the ticket-paying public when his roles call for portraying characters with a negative, ruthless streak. Other examples: Ek Villain (2014) and Ittefaq (2017). Evidently, it's the element of an actor with the archetypal 'chocolate boy' looks venturing into the unexpected  area of darkness, which has worked overwhelmingly in his favour.
Known by his nickname Sid, perhaps even he couldn't have predicted that his seven-year-old career, kicking off with the goody-goody Student of the Year (2012), would have twisted towards a diametrically different course altogether.
The dilemma now is, will he be stereotyped? Hopefully not, as long as he selects his upcoming assignments with a semblance of  the intelligence of Ayushmann Khurrana, Rajkummar Rao and Vicky Kaushal in the last few years. Indeed, he has a long way to go before he can be described as 'versatile' as the aforecited trio.
Anyone who has seen him at work will vouch for the fact that Sid is a pukka professional - punctual and unfussy. Mentored by the star-maker Karan Johar (whom he assisted as director on the Shah Rukh Khan-Kajol emotional drama My Name is Khan before being introduced in Student of the Year), he couldn't have dreamt of a better launch project. Yet, his fellow debutant, Varun Dhawan, raced way ahead of him, displaying his Govinda-style dancing skills and acting chops. Comparatively, Sid lacked the initiative, aggression (that's mandatory, alas) and consistent publicity, thereby, at most, coming off second-best.
Question: What's Sidharth Malhotra like in real life? When I met him on location in the picture-postcard hilltown of Coonoor for the shoot of Kapoor & Sons (2016), he was deeply in love with his co-star Alia Bhatt, and vice versa. The warmth they shared, eating their meals from the same plate, was charming. Here was a couple But news about a break-up followed. The grapevine insisted that this was caused by his heroine Jacqueline Fernandez during the shooting of A Gentleman (2017). Be that as it may, Alia maintained silence on the subject while Sidharth joked that Akshay Kumar is the only co-actor he hasn't been linked with. Funny? Not quite.
Clearly, in his start-off years, Sid would never open up in interviews. Try to converse with him like I did in Coonoor, and he would answer in monosyllables, leading me to the conclusion that he's either bashful or smartly evasive. Ask him about his father, a former merchant navy officer and his mother, a housemaker, and he would ease up somewhat. Slowly but steadily, he had enough savings in his bank account to make them shift from Delhi to a swishy apartment in Bandra, the preferred address of the B-townies.
Now that he's in a safer zone professionally, the actor ascribes his acting instincts primarily to Amitabh Bachchan, explaining, that he was a die-hard fan of the film Hum (1991). "As a kid, I would act out reams of Bachchan saab's dialogues before my friends and parents. They would clap and ask me to do an encore; the applause gave me confidence. Moreover, I'd be often  told that I wasn't bad-looking and that I should go to Mumbai when I grew up. I guess that's when I was bitten by the acting bug."
As a teenager, he became a top model in Delhi but felt "showing off great designer clothes and endorsing all sorts of consumer products wasn't my scene at all; I had no connections in Mumbai but told myself, it's high time that I got myself out of the rut. As they say, no pain, no gain."
Sid can't be accused of nepotism but yes, if he hadn't landed one of the central roles in Student of the Year, he might have still been in Delhi, probably working at a humdrum desk job. He admits that he has gone through phases of rejection, adding, "But that's a part of every human being's journey. If I hadn't made an effort to surmount the obstacles, I wouldn't be in the privileged position of giving interviews today, would I?"
Right. Can the shy guy handle fame? "Shy?" he laughs. "You're correct to a point. But place me before the camera, and I can become a chameleon. In real life, I couldn't bash up a dozen opponents. In movies, it's feasible to even become a superhero."
At this point, mercifully, he sounds more articulate. Quiz him about reports linking him with Kiara Advani, and he blushes beetroot red, and mumbles, "No, we're just good friends."
So, see, Sidharth Malhotra has picked up all the politically-correct Bollywood phrases. The shy guy has arrived, and has come to stay, fingers crossed.  
wknd@khaleejtimes.com