There is a new sense of perspective to Rajkummar Rao’s life — and it runs deeper than his next role.
Personally, becoming a father has reordered his priorities. Professionally, he is navigating one of the most demanding phases of his career: a physical transformation to play Ujjwal Nikam in Prahaar, stepping into the flamboyance of Sourav Ganguly, and then shifting gears entirely for Raftaar, his home production. Yet, amid all the change, there is an unmistakable groundedness.
“Becoming a father has completely shifted my sense of what is important,” he says. “But professionally, I’m also trying to slow down and give each film all the time it deserves.”
That desire to slow down is not a retreat from ambition — it is a refinement of it. His filmography, spanning Newton, Trapped, Srikanth, Stree 2 and beyond, was never built on a single image. It was built on reinvention.
“I didn’t have to change who I was as an actor to become commercially successful,” he reflects. “If that means I’m their star, I am — but on my own terms.”
Predictability, he admits, is the one thing that kills his interest. The leap from Nikam’s controlled intensity to Ganguly’s explosive personality excites precisely because it demands something new. With Ganguly especially, the challenge is avoiding imitation — finding what lies beneath the icon’s famous mannerisms.
Success has brought freedom, but Rao is determined not to let comfort creep in creatively. “I deliberately look for things that scare me. I want to keep that hunger alive.”
Away from the spotlight, he is, by his own account, refreshingly ordinary — someone who laughs, eats, travels, and loves time with family. The actor and the person, carefully balanced.
For Rao, the next chapter isn’t about proving stardom. It’s about discovering how many different actors he can still become a star