latest:The rise and rise of Amit Sadh

He is the new poster boy of OTT platforms. His life reads like a struggler’s fairy tale. A look at his fascinating career graph

Seema Sachdeva

It has been a long road to success, 18 years to be precise. This is the time it took Amit Sadh to reach where he has. The new poster boy of OTT platforms has been setting the screens on fire with his performances in web-series like Avrodh — The Siege Within, Breathe, Breathe into the Shadows, etc. besides his roles in films like Yaara and Shakuntala Devi. Currently he’s shooting for Zee5’s web-series Zidd opposite Amrita Puri. His hit show Breathe, in which he plays Inspector Kabir Sawant on hunt for serial killer played by R Madhavan, is being dubbed in English for a wider audience. His physical transformation, which came after a training of 6 months, in the second season of Breathe: Into the Shadows, wherein he’s cast opposite Abhishek Bachchan, is unmissable. He’s been making headlines with another powerful performance in SonyLiv’s, Avrodh: The Siege Within, which is based on the 2016 Uri surgical attacks. As Major Videep Singh, his portrayal of Major Mike Tango has been loved by the audiences and critics alike.

It has taken a lot of hard work, patience, acceptance of failures, realising his mistakes and his faith in himself as well as God to reach where he has. Sadh feels he is a “product of million miracles.”

But refusing to call himself a star, he says, “Stars are far off. I’m happy being an actor. I don’t want to create any walls around me.”

Amit Sadh recently completed 10 years in Bollywood. He has done films like Kai Po Che, Guddu Rangeela, Phoonk2, Race 3, Running Shaadi, Akira, Sultan and Gold.

On the outsider debate in Bollywood, the 41-year-old says, “I do not allow anyone to call me an outsider in this industry. I’m as much an insider in this industry as anyone else.” On whether he faced nepotism, he says, “If this industry was so bad, would I have reached here? The entertainment industry is like any other industry. Just because of a few such persons, one can’t blame the entire industry. There are many good people here as well. A little bit of favouritism is in every industry. If I start crying nepotism today, then I’ll not be true to the people who gave me an opportunity to work in the first place. My God, too, will get angry with me.”

Acting was not something that this alumnus of La Martiniere, Lucknow, set out to do when he left home after a fight with his family when he was barely 16. With survival on mind, he did sundry jobs like working as a house help, salesperson, security guard at a showroom, etc. A bet with a friend led to him auditioning for a role in Mumbai and he got the role of Aditya Bhargava in Neena Gupta’s teen drama Kyon Hota Hai Pyarrr. After this initial break as well as roles in TV shows like Durgesh Nandini, Guns and Roses and Kohinoor, a short temper and outspoken nature soon saw him being out of work and he was back to square one. Though he did participate in reality shows like Nach Baliye, Bigg Boss and Fear Factor, but these didn’t translate into much work for him.

As he stopped getting any roles, realisation dawned upon him that he needed to change himself and keep the focus on his work. To improve his craft and hone his acting skills further, he joined New York’s Lee Strasberg Theatre and Acting institute.

His Bollywood debut came with Ram Gopal Varma’s Phoonk in 2010 but it was Abhishek Kapoor’s Kai Po Che! (2013) that got him noticed. The success of the film, however, didn’t transform into roles for him as it did for his costars Sushant Singh Rajput as well as Rajkummar Rao. Refusing to be disheartened, he kept working hard and aspiring to achieve success. “I am a gladiator and fighter. I don’t look back. I’m quite strong and I don’t cry after what happened with me yesterday. Neither am I stressed about tomorrow. I’ll work hard and achieve my aim, even if it takes me any number of years.”

This struggler’s fairy tale, which is the triumph of human spirit, brings hope to many trying to cope with the unfairness of life. To those disheartened by failures, he says, the only thing that comes between you and your dream is you. “If you want something; go get it. If you have a dream, you have to protect it. Don’t ever let somebody tell you that you can’t achieve it.”