Akshaye Khanna in & as the enigma!

Akshaye Khanna as Rahman Dakait in ‘Dhurandhar’

I have it from a friend, on the set of Laxman Utekar's blockbuster Chhaava (2025) once, wherein actor Akshaye Khanna as Mughal emperor Aurangzeb was being instructed to furiously scream, out of desperate anger, in a particular scene.

Khanna shot back, "I'm Hindustan's Badshah! Why will I yell?" Take the cripplingly calm Khanna out of Chhaava, the rest of the film is a screeching fest, first.

Khanna played the aged Muslim king in a diametrically opposite way from the excessively feisty, ravenous Ranveer Singh as young Alauddin Khilji in Sanjay Leela Bhansali's Padmaavat (2018) - a scene-stealer still.
In such a way that one forgets - technically, who was the hero of Padmaavat? Shahid Kapoor, of course.

In a reversal of sorts, ever since Aditya Dhar's Dhurandhar (2025), with Singh as the hero this time on, there are only two things I've heard from everyone else who's watched the film.

Mughal emperor Aurangzeb, in ‘Chhaava'. Pics/By Special Arrangement

Primarily - about Khanna as Rehman Dakait! Plus, the box-office brouhaha around Dhurandhar, surpassing R1,000 crore, worldwide-gross; R10 crore plus, post-release, up until 22nd day (beating Pushpa 2); Netflix deal worth Rs 285 crore, etc, etc.

Or that Khanna himself has, subsequently, upped his price enough to exit Drishyam 3.

Frankly, how much Khanna charges is his business. We must, ideally, mind our own. That said, what's common to the model roles mentioned above?

That they're unambiguously dark, morally unhinged, certifiably Gabbar-type stylised villains - without that shred/shade of a balancing grey that Hindi films had begun to veer toward, mid-2000 onwards; making space for, say, anti-heroes/antagonists, instead.

The standard villain trope continued to dominate Tamil/Telugu mainstream throughout, still (often even with actors sourced from Bollywood). Some of this ‘pure evil' has poured over from the current South, surely.

Although, must add, what's the best film I watched at a theatre in 2025? Paul Thomas Anderson's One Battle After Another. Who should it be most remembered for? Sean Penn as the completely crazy Colonel Lockjaw!

Self-admittedly, Khanna first played the villain in Abbas-Mustan's Humraaz (2002), pitted opposite Bobby Deol - who, in turn, entirely resurrected his career as the inexplicably bizarre, Abrar ul Haque, in Sandeep Vanga Reddy's Animal (2023), likewise brazening it out with his villainous swag.

Both Deol and Khanna, sons of 1970s superstars (Dharmendra, Vinod Khanna), got launched into Bollywood by their dads as producers, in the 1990s - with Rajkumar Santoshi's Barsaat ('95), Pankaj Parashar's Himalay Putra ('97), respectively.

There's collective muscle memory for movie-stars from the '90s, when the mainstream was a monoculture, that we inevitably end up rooting for the underdogs from those times - in case they lost their route somewhere mid-way, only to find themselves moving up again.

There's a sticky cord. Familiarity breeds content. It could operate with several others (Govinda, chiefly), if they find the right vehicle to re-enter. There's enough space. But the Deol-Khanna analogy really ends there.

Besides as a staggeringly controlled film actor, the love for Khanna, 50, primarily resides in the inimitable mystique that surrounds him.

As in a star, who's lived throughout in the neighbouring town to Bollywood, if you may - a Malabar Hill/South Bombay resident, with a weekend home in Alibaug - a sworn single man, who flunked his Std XI at HR College, and left formal education after a year of boarding-school in Ooty.

His dad, drawn to Osho, took ‘sanyas', when Khanna was a li'l kid, only to return once the commune in the US got disbanded (check Netflix doc, Wild Wild Country; of course, you have).

Most things he can't recall, including why he's named Akshaye with an ‘e' - his parents told him a few times, but he's forgotten since, and now they're no more. I know this from a relatively rare, extensive conversation with him, circa 2020.

What's it like to sit opposite the fluently reticent Khanna, before a camera, for about an hour-and-a-half?

Gently painful, but equally pleasurable, for the same reason. That is, you're aware he's mildly amnesic in public, but whatever he's saying, he hasn't before, either.

That's including his perspectives on cinema, wherein he loathes posters designed from photoshoots. They lose out on the truth captured, when digitally reproduced from a moment in the film itself.

Or that the issue with theatre is that it's not recorded.

There's a point where he did dig deep inwards, when asked, what it was like, as an onscreen actor, to lose hair at age 19/20?

"Devastating! It's like a pianist losing his fingers. Because the way you look as an actor is very important - especially this part (pointing to the face upwards). [But] it's up to you, and what you are comfortable with doing [about it]."

Khanna carried on as himself, showing up onscreen as the lead, often with receding hairline - secure in his vulnerability, making up for it with confidence and charm that the camera naturally adores.

It's hard to take your eyes off Khanna on the big screen, mainly because he's not desperately seeking them. The word ‘underrated, has, therefore, remained stuck as his unwittingly adopted first name.

Personally, I know that feeling. Perhaps, you do too. It's not a good one. But then again, in the long-run, between the two, you'd rather be underrated than over; no?

Mayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass culture.
He tweets @mayankw14 Send your feedback to mailbag@mid-day.com
The views expressed in this column are the individual's and don't represent those of the paper.