Telly Glitz

He was selected for the song and dance routine but was destined to do the divine. “I was among the top 30 selected in Amitabh Bachchan Coporation Ltd’s talent search,but when the company had to wind up operations,I did not return home to Lucknow and in due course found myself playing the lead role in Jai Jai Shiv Shankar,” says actor Santosh Shukla,who is wrapping up the Chandrakanta remake on SaharaOne. In the city taking a “much needed break”,he says he would next be seen as celebrity participant in the new season of Raaz Pichhle Janm Ka on imagineTV.

“I got my break in Maano ya Na Maano,when the producer Ekta Kapoor was still operating from a makeshift office in her garage. During a shoot I was noticed by the casting director who was on the lookout for an actor to play Lord Shiva and he was impressed by my long hair and height. But I was young and there were doubts if I could pull it off till they worked on my get-up and made me fit the bill,” recalls the actor,who enjoyed a long innings doing the popular show aired by Doordarshan. But the risk of doing mythologicals is that an actor gets typecast. “Most of the work that came my way was similar,so I continued playing characters like Lord Ram or Virendra Singh in Kahaani Chandrakanta Ki. Costume drama has come to be my forte I guess and I am not complaining,” he says.