He may be a star now, but there was a time when Ayushmann Khurrana's family and friends thought he'd never make it in Bollywood...
Thanks to INKtalks for the footage.
Thanks to INKtalks for the footage.
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Short filmTranscript
00:00I used to wear spectacles, I had a unibrow,
00:03yeah, and I plucked my eyebrows at school.
00:04Because I was skinny, I was also short.
00:06I was a sperm donor, so I was a sperm donor.
00:10When people want to be a hero, they want to be a hero,
00:13you know, like bodybuilding and saving and all that stuff.
00:17Now, I mean, sperm donation is also saving
00:19in a different way, but it's a, in a place like India
00:23when the movie was made, you weren't sure
00:26how it was going to fly, and how did that job come to you,
00:31and what went on in your head before you said yes to it?
00:35I think you'll find it very funny if I say
00:37I was already prepared to be a sperm donor.
00:40It was in 2002, I was part of a reality series called
00:43Roadies, I think technically I'm the only actor
00:46who's come from a reality show, and that too from Roadies.
00:50So during that time, Roadies was just a travel show
00:53from point A to point B, and it's quite surprising
00:57that most of my batch mates from Roadies,
01:00one of the girls was from National Law School, Bangalore,
01:05and then there was a girl who was studying,
01:09I don't know, Harvard or Oxford,
01:10I don't know, one of the universities.
01:11So that was very unlike Roadies.
01:13But in Roadies, there was a task of sperm donation.
01:17In 2002, I was 20 that time, and out of five boys,
01:22three samples were selected, I was one of them.
01:24So eight years down the line,
01:29I was offered this film called Vicky Donor,
01:33and most of the actors were saying no to the script
01:35because they thought it's too creepy, it's too sleazy,
01:38how can you make a film on a sperm donor?
01:40But I had gone through that experience.
01:42So I was like, you know, I'm a method actor.
01:44You're already a method actor.
01:45I'm a method actor, I can do this.
01:47And I said, sir, this is a left-handed game.
01:52Do you have a goal of these are all the kinds of characters
01:54I want to play, I want to be a little edgy,
01:56or you decide as it comes?
01:59How do you track your goal
02:02of what kinds of movies you want to do?
02:05I believe you only become fearless
02:06when you have seen a lot of failures in life.
02:09I've seen a lot of failures in life.
02:11I've always been an underdog.
02:12I used to have braces, used to wear spectacles.
02:18I had a uni-brow, yeah, I plucked my eyebrows at school.
02:21But yeah.
02:21You still pluck your eyebrows?
02:22Yeah, I do that.
02:23But I think if you've seen a lot of failures in life,
02:26like I've failed in auditions,
02:28and there were times in school
02:30when I was like desperate to do theater.
02:32I was not getting the leading role because I was skinny.
02:35I was also short.
02:36I used to pray to God every day,
02:38God, make me 5'9".
02:41And he just stopped me at 5'9 1⁄2".
02:43See, you get what you ask for.
02:45And I was 50 kgs in 5'9 1⁄2",
02:47at 5'9 1⁄2", in 11th standard.
02:50And even my peers, my family members,
02:54my batchmates from school,
02:56they never thought I would ever be a leading Bollywood actor.
03:00So I was always an underdog.
03:03And apart from that,
03:04I think fearlessness also comes from the milieu you're from.
03:07And also, if you've done theater in life, for example,
03:12you get in touch with people
03:13from lowest common denominator.
03:15And I've done a lot of street theater.
03:18I had to make a choice between theater and music in school.
03:23My first play was Joseph and His Amazing Technical Dream
03:27Code by Andrew Lloyd Webber, it's a musical.
03:29And I sang in that, I acted in that play.
03:32Then I formed two theater groups in Chandigarh,
03:34Manch Tantra and Aghaaz.
03:37And we were the only ones from a B-town
03:40to compete in an urban setup,
03:44like IIT Powai or BITS Pilani.
03:46We used to take our theater group over there.
03:48And we used to perform for every kind of people,
03:53in villages, every way,
03:55used to just travel from length and breadth of country.
03:58And I remember there was this train called Punjab Mail,
04:02which used to take 48 hours from Chandigarh to Bombay.
04:05And we were like 20 bunch of boys and girls,
04:08in fact boys.
04:09I was in all boys college and all boys school.
04:13And we used to play guitars, dholak, tabla,
04:17and entertain the passengers in that train,
04:20second class sleeper train.
04:22And we used to collect money after that.
04:24And we used to collect so much money
04:26that after finishing our IIT Powai competition,
04:30we used to sponsor our own Goa trips.
04:33So I guess, I think it comes from
04:35the kind of setup you have.
04:36This is a mood indigo trip.
04:37Mood indigo trip.
04:38Yeah, that's right.
04:39So I guess theater needs a lot of money for sure.
04:42And artists should be respected.
04:43It's like food for soul, not for stomach.