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Thanks to Aryan Khan’s satirical action comedy series The Ba***ds of Bollywood, actor Rajat Bedi is finally getting the spotlight that he seldom received during the first phase of his career in the 2000s. Although he appeared in quite a few films since his debut in director Raj N Sippy’s Do Hazaar Ek (1998), his career never truly took off. As a result, he even bid farewell to the movies at one point and moved to Canada to find a new livelihood before eventually returning to try his luck as an actor once again.
Recently, Rajat Bedi opened up about his struggles with mental health and financial difficulties. He also revealed that there were many occasions when he was coerced by producers into forgoing his remuneration because their respective films failed at the box office.
“I have been a part of a lot of hit films. But never did I get my due; others would take the dues, celebrate the success and all. And I would just be, ‘okay,’ carry on to the next project. And somewhere that was very disheartening. And then obviously, financially, I was not seeing a future because I would not get paid as much as I wanted. There would be a contractual obligation by a producer. They would not pay on time, and by the end, the producer would be losing money. So, he would say, ‘Please leave your money.’ I was here, I was getting name and recognition. But financially, it was going nowhere because I wasn’t making any big money,” he shared during a conversation with Mid-day.
Recalling having nervous breakdowns and taking medication to sleep, he said, “At one point, I was completely done; I was having nervous breakdowns. I was on tablets. I was taking rest pills to sleep at night. I was not getting sleep because I was constantly thinking of how the house would run. What will this be? What will that be? How will it be? I couldn’t see the future ahead. Everything was dependent upon the film’s release, and after a point, even my wife couldn’t handle it, and she suggested that we must get out of here.”
Frustrated with his acting career and seeing no future in it, Rajat moved to Canada with his family in 2007-08 and started a real estate business. However, even that journey came with its own challenges, as he initially faced financial losses. In an earlier conversation with Siddharth Kannan, Rajat revealed that just as he was trying to get back on his feet, partnership issues began to emerge. “In 2012, we faced a huge setback. There were partnership issues, and the whole company went for a toss. We were in financial turmoil after doing business with around 200 million Canadian dollars. After reaching that scale, we came back down overnight,” he said.
Rajat Bedi added, “Since I faced significant setbacks and deceit from my previous partner, I found two new ones and resumed real estate business in a grand manner. In 2018, my partners cheated me so badly that we got into a legal battle and had a settlement. The trauma that we faced between 2018 and 2021 was crazy.”
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