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Rajkummar Rao reflects on not having enough money for food, says he has no fear of going broke: ‘Cannot take me lower’
Rajkummar Rao paid tribute to his late mother, and looked back at the financial difficulties that he experienced in his life.
Rajkummar Rao picked Srikanth Bolla’s biopic as one of his most challenging roles.(Photo: Rajkummar Rao/Instagram)Actor Rajkummar Rao opened up about the financial difficulties that his family experienced when he was a child. Rajkummar lived in Gurugram back when, as he said, it was still a village and not the cosmopolitan city that it is now. He said that times were so tough that his teachers had to pay his school fees at times. Rajkummar appeared on Barkha Dutt’s Mojo Story, where he also spoke about the difficulties he faced after moving to Mumbai to pursue a career as a film actor.
Asked about the role that his late mother played in his life, Rajkummar described her as his biggest ‘inspiration’. He said, “I was raised in a joint family in Gurgaon, and I was not raised with money. We didn’t have enough. But she never made us feel it. I have two siblings, there are three of us. There were times when school teachers paid our school fees, because financially, it used to become very tough, for months. Money was an issue, but she never made us feel that there was a problem. She would arrange it somehow. And back then, Gurgaon was literally a small town. For me to think that I would be a film actor one day was an impossible dream. But my mother really supported me.”
He said that moving to Pune to enroll at the Film and Television Institute of India changed his outlook towards life, but when he moved to Mumbai, reality hit him. “When I came to Mumbai, in 2008, it was a very expensive city compared to where I come from. And there were days when there wasn’t enough money to eat. And I didn’t know anyone in the city. I came here with one showreel of mine that my editor friend from FTII made, and I thought that if I show it to everyone they’d give me work. But that didn’t happen. It took me two years to get my first film, LSD,” he said.
Asked if he has the fear of being broke again, considering what he has been through, Rajkummar said, “The only thing I’m scared of is losing work. I just want to work, every day of my life, till I die. I just want to be an actor. I’m not scared of not having enough money, because I’ve seen that. It cannot get worse than that. I’ve seen the lowest, so you cannot take me lower than that.”
Rajkummar recently starred in Stree 2, among the highest-grossing Hindi films of all time. In an interview with the Indian Express, he laughed at the suggestion that he is charging Rs 5 crore per project now. “I read different figures every day. I’m not stupid to burden my producers. Being a part of the biggest blockbuster is not going to change me as an actor, money is just a byproduct of my passion. I want to work all my life so I keep looking for roles that surprise me, excite me, challenge and help me grow.”
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