Dinesh Kamath's column 'Movie World: The Star Kid and Bollywood Actor Sooraj Pancholi is prepared for the future' that was published in Newsband

Movie World

The Star Kid and Bollywood Actor Sooraj Pancholi is prepared for the future

By Dinesh Kamath

Sooraj Pancholi made his debut in 2015 with Hero. The journey in Bollywood has been hard for him so far. In fact, It has been very tough. But it actually prepared him for the future. It might get tougher for him so this is just the beginning. He done two films this year - Satellite Shankar and Time to Dance. Time to Dance was shot in London, before Satellite Shankar, which he shot throughout India; it's a story that spans Kashmir to Kanyakumari. It's a road trip of a soldier, and it's India from a soldier's point of view. It has nothing to do with war or any other foreign country, it's just about a soldier's point of view, about India and his journey through the country.

Satellite Shankar is an interesting character. They call him 'Satellite' because he's connecting India, he's connecting dots. When you see the film you'll know. For now it's announced that it will release on July 5. It might get postponed.

Road trip movies are not so common in Bollywood. On a personal level it taught Sooraj something - this journey from one end of the country to the other. Soorajnever knew India was that beautiful. He had never been up North. They were shooting in this place called Chitkul - the last inhabited village near the Indo-China border. If you open Google Maps for Chitkul - it's half in English for India and half in Chinese for China. It is another world, really beautiful. They drove down to Chandigarh in Punjab, then to Maharashtra, then to Tamil Nadu. So it was like a different geography throughout; Sooraj realized that India is big and beautiful.

Time to Dance is a fun dancing film, written by Remo D'Souza and directed by Stanley D'Costa. It has Isabelle Kaif. The film is due to release at the end of this year. Sooraj had to take dance classes. He is not a bad dancer considering the fact that he has trained with good dancers, he has trained with Remo's students, who are some of the best we have. He is not as good as them, and doesn't think I'll ever be. Because that is their daily thing, he is not that good.

Sooraj’s dad Aditya was quite a heartthrob in his days on screen. How did he feel growing up with an actor for a dad? The fact is he didn't even know that he was an actor till he grew up. I didn't even know his mother (Zarina Wahab) was an actress. Because they never spoke about films, though they won a lot of awards, they never displayed their awards or watched any films at home. They never would talk about producers or directors or what films were happening. They still don't. It's like a very normal middle class household. They all had dinner together, they talk about random things but they never talk about work.

His father Adity had quite a star power in his heydays. He still does. But growing up in that house was very normal for Sooraj. So even now when people take pictures of him it feels very normal because he has seen it at home also. Destiny brought him here.

How he got interested in acting? When he watched Hrithik Roshan in Kaho Naa Pyaar Hai! Every boy wanted to be an actor then, every single boy wanted to have a body like him, wanted to dance like him, wanted to look like him. Then he started his journey with assisting directors on films and he got really lucky that he got to assist Sanjay Leela Bhansali for Guzaarish. He was around 17 or 18 at the time.

After this, he went to acting school for about a year and then joined Kabir Khan for Ek Tha Tiger. That is where he met Salman Khan, who asked him if he wanted to act. And he was still not sure if he wanted to act or direct, or what he wanted to do. That's how he got the film ‘Hero’. Salman has been a huge support to
Sooraj.

Sooraj has encountered both high and low points in his career. When he feels low, he spends time with family.

Bollywood is going through a phase for a while now where a lot of stuff (not all of it good) is being said about star sons and daughters. It is quite easy to get a platform if you come from a film background. But it is double the hard work and courage you need, double the backlash, double the people hating on you. It's tough. And the new kids now like Janhvi (Kapoor) and Sara (Ali Khan) and others, it's very tough for them. What they go through on social media is horrible. And now social media is huge. And they have to work doubly hard compared to any other newcomer. Because they're automatically compared to your father's or mother's last film, not their first film.

Sooraj is not as active as other people on Social Media. He is just going with the flow. In fact he had just gone back to Twitter. It takes a lot of time and gives him headaches sometimes, gives him anxiety about what to post next. He believes that social media is needed now but it should be used for a good cause and not for pulling people down.

He has intentions to get behind the camera again. Maybe a producer someday. But he has seen directors and it is a tougher job than being an actor. It needs a lot of patience and mind power, and good sleep and writing and he can't do it. He can do dance, action and acting. He would never want to sit down with a pen and paper and write. He is not made for that. He prefers to stick to acting and maybe producing.

While shooting for his new film Time to Dance, he was acting with Katrina Kaif's sister Isabelle Kaif who according to him is a fun person. Isabelle and he became really good friends when they had three-four months to learn how to dance. They became such good friends that they knew what to do with each and every scene. Sooraj found Isabelle a fun person to work with and an amazing dancer. A lot of people may not have seen her dancing, she's really good. It's a different style. It's a different dance film.

His mother Zarina Wahab has many good films to her credit like Chitchor and Gharonda. Everyone knows her from those films. His father was always from the more commercial side of films and his mother from the arty side of films. Film advice he takes from his mother and life advice from his father.

Hero is a 2015 Indian romantic action film directed by Nikhil Advani and co-written by Umesh Bist, a remake of Subhash Ghai's directed 1983 film of the same name, which stars Jackie Shroff. The film starred Sooraj Pancholi and Athiya Shetty, son of actor Aditya Pancholi and daughter of actor Sunil Shetty respectively. Aditya Pancholi has an important role in the film himself. The film was released on 11 September 2015 worldwide.

Sooraj Pancholi plays Sooraj Kaushik, a gangster from Mumbai, and his co-star Athiya Shetty plays Radha Mathur. Athiya Shetty, for your information, is the daughter of Sunil Shetty. So let’s wait and see how high Sooraj rises in Bollywood in the days to come.