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Akshay Kumar, a constant presence in the film industry for 38 years, has explored every possible genre, including action, comedy, romance, and drama. He is someone who appears equally at ease pulling off high-octane stunts as he is delivering punchlines in comedies. And yet, despite his extensive body of work and versatility, he has often not been given the credit he truly deserves as an actor. That’s a sentiment filmmaker and producer Vipul Shah echoed in a recent interview with Galatta Plus. Vipul, who has directed just seven films in his career, four of them with Akshay, shared his thoughts on how the industry has overlooked the Kesari 2 star’s acting talent.
“In my first two films when I was working with Akshay, I realised here is an actor who himself doesn’t know what he is capable of. He was just being labelled as an action hero and in that era he was changing his image by doing comedy films, but people were not taking him seriously. Maybe never was he considered a great actor or even a good actor by any reviewers, so he also kind of had this ‘I don’t care’ space. But I thought that he had a lot more to offer.”
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He added, “I was seeing that in both the films I worked with him, two completely different characters, and he was just so comfortable doing a lot of things as an actor that nobody really gave him credit for. And then I realized that nobody, in his entire career, had made him a Punjabi munda. He’s a total Punjabi guy at heart and soul, but no one had presented him that way. And that’s what Namaste London was going to do, give him that space to be himself: the Punjabi munda, the carefree, fun-loving guy. And he just slipped into the film smooth as silk, because that’s what comes most naturally to him.”
In the same conversation, Vipul Shah also pointed out how Akshay Kumar has consistently managed to reinvent himself, bouncing back from career slumps and strings of flops. Most recently, with the success of Kesari 2, he once again silenced critics who had written him off.
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