Brawn With Brains

“Well,the core of Farhan Akhtar’s Don is the same; the only difference is that we have automatic weapons instead of pistols,fast cars and bikes in place of Enfields and jeeps,and a chase across the world with international agencies on the prowl,” he says. Shroff is playing a character called Arjun,and while the size of his role is medium,it’s the impact that he says is extra large. “I do make a dent,” is all he lets his mouth escape.

He says getting in was one big test. “I went through painfully long auditions,kept waiting,and the whole process was so lengthy that I had run out of patience,” he tells us.

Shroff’s love for acting developed while he was shooting for a Cadbury commercial couple of years ago. “It was a real tough ad and brought me face-to-face with the actor in me,” he says.

Interestingly,this is not the first talent Shroff has discovered in himself. While he was at a boarding school in Panchgani,it was cricket that beckoned,even taking him to England for some matches. In college ,modeling appeared somewhere on the horizon but a twist of fate sent him to Australia instead,where he studied e-commerce,marketing and human resource management. “At the same time,I was also working as a bouncer and a doorman for some of the biggest night clubs in Melbourne,” he laughs.

A career in IT looked predictable,and after a masters in Applied Information Technology,he made a quick trip back to Mumbai. “I took up a couple of modeling assignments again before I was supposed to leave for Australia,but I never left,” he says. One thing led to the other and Shroff started focusing on a career that spelt “luxury,exotica,travel and lots of fun”.

“Then I got the acting bug. I did a complete analysis of myself,identified the areas that needed work,joined acting classes,taught myself the basics of navigating a character’s arc,the trajectory of a script and of course,watched films back-to-back,” he says. Working in Don 2 made him realise how much “fun” serious actors like Shah Rukh Khan,Boman Irani and Priyanka Chopra can be. “They are not at all intimidating or starry; they know their craft and are great company.” But it was Akhtar who won him over with his risk-taking attitude,focus and work ethic.

Shroff says he is happy debuting under a big banner than in the usual romcoms made for newcomers. “Let’s see what the future has in store,” he signs off.

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