Vicky Kaushal says he had a ‘significant’ inferiority complex as teenager, suffered anxiety in early phase of career: ‘Until the age of 20-21, I couldn’t even grow beard’

Vicky Kaushal had a lot of inferiority complexes

He said, “I was not exactly bullied or ragged, but I had a significant inferiority complex. I think my shyness and fear of crowds often came from that. I was always too thin and lanky, so I would think that I couldn’t fight someone. Until the age of 20 or 21, I couldn’t even grow a beard. I wanted to go on stage, and I enjoyed performing a lot, but I didn’t know if I could become an actor. I hadn’t even thought about playing the hero’s role. I just wanted to act. So, these inferiority complexes, I had a lot. I was damaging myself so much, why would anyone else need to bully me from the outside?”

Vicky Kaushal was worried about his weight

But Vicky also admitted that neither his friends nor his family were responsible for him feeling bad about himself. It was all ‘internal’. The actor added, “There is so much about ‘Be a Man’. Now, what’s the surface-level definition of being macho? It’s being in good health, having a beard, and having good hair, that’s when you’re considered macho. That’s when you appear strong. If you’re skinny, with a baby face and bony features, you’re not considered macho. So, it was quite prominent, especially during my teenage years, that I should gain weight. I used to be worried, ‘Why isn’t my weight increasing?’ All of that used to play a lot in my mind.”

The actor got his confidence from playing cricket. He would feel confident about himself when a team’s captain would choose him first.

Vicky Kaushal in his debut film Masaan.

While he dealt with an inferiority complex during his teenage years, Vicky Kaushal suffered from anxiety when he stepped into the world of film. The actor made his debut in 2015 with Bombay Velvet and Masaan.

Though he cannot define when he was going through depression, he accepts feeling “anxious and extremely sad”. He said, “I have felt broken. I have felt all of these things, so yes I have gone through these emotions. And I have also gone through feeling bottled, where I don’t have a medium to explode.”

In times when he couldn’t express how he was feeling, being an actor came to his rescue. He would release his emotions in a scene without anyone realising where it was coming from.

The actor also narrated one of his nervous breakdowns while watching a movie at a theatre with his friend. Vicky shared, “Once, I had gone to watch a movie and it was an emotional film and a great film and everything, but I was howling. It was the last row and a corner seat I had taken and this is, I am saying after becoming an actor, my career has just about started. Later, I realised it was not the film. I was just so pent up with something and I did not have the time or the bandwidth or just the mind frame to realise all this I was stuffing inside. I stopped watching the film, but I just loved that I was in a black box where nobody was watching me and I could just cry. And I kept crying. I remember there was a friend with me and she could not understand what was going on, but she soon understood that it was not the film.”

Now, Vicky Kaushal is among the most successful actors in Hindi cinema. He has won accolades for his performance in films like Uri: The Surgical Strike and Udham Singh. He is looking forward to the release of his films, The Great Indian Family and Sam Bahadur.