Handsome Hooda knows when to take himself seriously (onscreen), and not (in life, in general)
Randeep Hooda. Pic/Kirti Surve Parade
While I’m peeing in the office loo, I feel someone’s hand pretend-grab my backside. Totally thrown off by that moment, I turn around, yelling, “What the f***!”
It’s actor Randeep Hooda playing that prank from behind me. He’d come over for an interview/chat to the mid-day office.
And, frankly, no teaser for a journalistic profile describes him better than the one at that loo — letting out an impish laugh, as if a teenager at the men’s locker-room; seldom taking himself seriously, at one end.
At the other, onscreen, a handsome Haryanvi hunk, who’ll go to any extent to strip himself of all vanity — say, Sarbjit (2016), Savarkar (2024), where he’s lost weight to the point of an exposed rib-cage — in order to be taken seriously as an actor.
Some of the latter traits probably come from training for years under master-actor Naseeruddin Shah’s theatre troupe, Motley. Much of his friendly hazing/ragging towards me come from the fact that we went to the same school, though he was a few years senior.
That was Delhi Public School (DPS), RK Puram (RKP) — a nerdy/padhaku place, populated enough to house a neighbourhood. To give you a sense, in the XIIth standard, I was in section R!
The actor in Sarbjit, during the filming of Swatantrya Veer Savarkar and as the antagonist of Jaat
Randeep moved to DPS in the XIth, feeling lost, “totally depressed”, with the hostel-warden particularly unkind towards him.
He was allowed meals, alone — after everybody else had eaten at the mess. DPS, RKP, has a thriving theatre scene, but Randeep couldn’t break into it, since he says, he was “too busy breaking [everyone’s] jaws!”
His early exposure to stage, where he acted, directed, and cinema, chiefly Hollywood classics/blockbusters, come from the more military-style sports school, in Rai, Haryana, that he went to before DPS.
It also inspired him to enrol in the National Defence Academy. Randeep’s dad asked him, why Army? Randeep showed him a film clip of Tom Cruise with Harry Faltermeyer’s Top Gun Anthem for background music.
His dad, a surgeon, replied, “Beta, in life, there is no background score.” It’s a lesson he understood even better, once he got into filmmaking!
Naseer and Randeep would’ve first met during the pre-production of Mira Nair’s Monsoon Wedding (MW, 2001). Randeep found a small part in it, unwittingly cracking an audition for Mira, in Delhi.
Naseer held an acting workshop for the film’s cast. MW competed at the Venice Film Festival. At the premiere night party, an American distributor walked up to Randeep to suggest he seemed the only one “not acting” in the film! It’s a huge compliment.
Randeep took it otherwise, approached Naseer instead, to check if he could join his theatre company. He recalls, “I couldn’t tell shit from chocolate. I wanted to take my own time, learn the craft, before exposing myself as an actor, who ‘doesn’t act’!”
His last international production was as the main villain in Russo Bros’ roaring actioner, Extraction (2016), opposite Chris Hemsworth.
In 2001, Randeep’s first film MW opened on the same weekend as Naseer’s Ismat Apa Ke Naam, his professional stage debut, at NCPA, Mumbai. He says, “As an actor, you dream of starring in and as [the lead].”
Randeep’s first film as hero was in and as D (2005), as in Dawood Ibrahim, produced by Ram Gopal Varma aka Ramu.
“Now, where do you go from there,” he laughs. It’s been almost exactly 20 years since. Turning struggle on its head, Ramu paid Randeep a monthly salary of Rs 35,000 for three years, saving him for an appropriate launch.
I first hung out with Randeep, circa 2013. We happened to be in Chennai. I was with my brother. Professionally bilingual, he was travelling with Naseer’s play, Jerome Kilty’s Dear Liar.
We partied away. He lost his phone that night. I found a new friend, actor Amit Sial.
Amit and Randeep went to Australia to study, and used to room-in and drive cabs together, often exchanging their passion for working in cinema someday. Once Randeep landed the lead in D, he had Amit over to Bombay.
Only, as Randeep recounts it best, “I threw Amit out of my house at 2 am one night, telling him he must find his own destiny, or he’ll continue to be my shadow. He didn’t speak to me for years.”
Amit, as we speak, is a legit OTT star (Inside Edge, Maharani, Mirzapur); even movies (Raid 2, Kesari 2, etc). Likewise, Randeep says, “Of the 40-odd films I’ve done, 25 have been with first-time directors.”
It takes gumption to go that route. In 2024, he wrote, produced and, mortgaging his home, personally financed his strongly skilled directorial debut, Savarkar.
He reasons, “Why wait like a wicketkeeper for the ball to nick, when you can bat, bowl…” Find your way.
I ask Randeep what film critic Gene Siskel used to in his interviews that, in turn, inspired Oprah Winfrey to write the book, What I Know For Sure. The question is, no matter what changes/happens in your life/world: What is it that you know, for sure?
He says, “That I’ll always be obsessive, or bull-headed, about something or the other — whether immersing myself in acting, making my home, growing trees, horse-riding…”
Seriously. And now I’m waiting for Randeep to crack a joke, and let out a random laugh!
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.
Subscribe today by clicking the link and stay updated with the latest news!" Click here!
