Dhanush was last seen in Atrangi Re and was praised for his performance in the movie. In an exclusive interview with Mayukh Majumdar, Content Strategist at Filmfare, Dhanush talks about how he became an accidental actor. “I never wanted to be an actor . . . my heart was not here. I was kind of forced into acting at a very young age. When I started, I wasn’t into it. And then I met this legendary filmmaker, Balu Mahendra, who is an amazing cinematographer as well. So, he made a film with me and when we were talking, he said that you are too young right now – I was 19 then – you don’t see what I see in you, you should take this seriously, you have a gift, I hope you see it soon and when somebody like that tells you this . . . then I thought that maybe I have a gift and I took it seriously. And I worked on it. After five to six years, I realised that sometimes you identify your calling and sometimes your calling identifies you and I now know that I couldn’t have done anything else,” he said.
When Dhanush first started out in the film industry, he was severely mocked by many naysayers and trolls for his appearance. The actor reminisces about those days and says that he is proud of the way he handled it back then.
“I started really young, I was 16 when I started. I faced a lot of criticism for my appearance, for the way I look. I was greeted with a lot of blockbuster success initially and then I had to go through a lot of failures where they had to write me off and then I had to come back. All this happened when I was very young and now I am more mature and I have experience and I know how to handle it better. But I am very proud of the way I handled it when I was 17, 18, 19, 20 years old when I didn’t know this world, had nobody to guide me, had no experience, no maturity and that teenager handled it pretty brilliantly. I feel so, yes,” he says.
And after all these years in the film industry and in the public eye, does it get easier to handle success and failure?
“I would be lying if I said that. Success affects me, failure also affects me. Failure makes me sad. Success makes me happy. I’m a normal human being and I try to learn from my failures and not repeat the same mistakes. I try that success doesn’t affect the decisions that I make in the future. I enjoy success inside my head by not outside,” he says, signing off.
