struggle of mithun chakravorty

» •• Mithun Chakravorty •• «


The basic struggle behind the iconic 80s star ensued from the fact that he was a staunch Naxalite in Bengal,
and when he wanted to leave the Naxal movement after his brother was killed in an accident,
the group made it harder for him because one was not allowed to just walk away from the Naxalite cause.

Yet Chakravorty soldiered on, and graduated from the Film and Television Institute of India in Pune.
He is one of the only actors to win a National Award for his debut film, Mrinal Sen's Mrigaya. 

STRUGGLE OF SHAHRUKH KHAN

» •• Shah Rukh Khan •• «


The quintessential struggler story, Shah Rukh's is the one that gives credence to the millions of starry-eyed dreamers who come to Mumbai in search
of finding everything. Khan once legendarily looked out at Mumbai's sea-facing Bandstand area and announced that he would rule the city.


This was even before he camped in the houses of directors Aziz Mirza and Viveck Vaswani,
as the television actor from Fauji and Circus slogged to get a foot into a cruel, insider-only industry.


Yet Khan wasn't ready to accept bit roles, and refused to play Anil Kapoor's driver in 1942: A Love Story,
even though he and wife Gauri were barely able to scrape together rent.


Khan stuck to his guns. Today, his Bandstand bungalow is a tourist shrine and he's a far
way from staying at friends' houses to put himself through.

STRUGGLE OF JACKIE SHROFF

» ••Jackie Shroff •• «

A Mumbai youth, Jaikishen Shroff didn't have it easy, and going by most reports, the boy took to the wrong side of the tracks and entered
the acquaintance of local ruffians. For a while, Jaikishen became Jaggu in South Bombay's Teen Patti, a small-time dada.

Still, there must have been something inherently magnetic about him, because despite his disastrous movie debut -- he played a side-villain
in Dev Anand's Swami Dada, his second film, Subhash Ghai's Hero, was a smash hit and made him a star overnight.

Then came a string of films pairing him with rising superstar Anil Kapoor,
and the Shroff-Kapoor duo was phenomenally successful through the 1980s.

Shroff kept at it since, and continues to surprise with
the occasionally powerful performance. 

struggle of akshay kumar

As a young lad, Rajiv Hari Om Bhatia was good at sports and so he went on to study martial arts in Bangkok. In the mean while he worked as a chef too. Coming back to Mumbai's Koliwada area, he started teaching martial arts when a student of his who was also a photographer suggested Akshay to look modelling as a career option. Modelling being much financially viable option, he progressed to films. Rest as they say is history.

Struggle comes with Bollywood: Neha Dhupia

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              

Actress Neha Dhupia admits that getting a break in Bollywood is no mean a feat as one has to struggle a lot to establish a foothold in the industry.

"I believe that there is a lot of struggle even now. No actor or a person can say that there is no struggle in their lives," the 31-year-old actress said during a promotional visit to an apparel store for her film "Pappu Can't Dance Saala".

After being crowned Miss India in 2002, Neha debuted in Bollywood with "Qayamat: City Under Threat" in 2003. She was last seen in "Gandhi To Hitler" this year.

The big Bollywood struggle

The big Bollywood struggle Aspiring actors continue to flood into Mumbai but less than one per cent actually find a toe-hold in this cutthroat industry. The saga continues… It’s a story of heartbreak. Countless young people, some just in their teens, reach Mumbai — the City of Tinsel Dreams — aspiring to achieve stardom. Of late, the aspirants have been arriving not only from the remote parts of India, but also from overseas. The third generation kids of Indians settled in New York, Los Angeles, London, Cape Town and Hong Kong, are increasingly jetting to Bollywood with their savings, to hang out at auditions day after day. Less than one per cent eventually find a toe-hold in the film industry. From California, 35-year-old Yash Mehta has chucked up his cushy executive job, a ‘luxurious car’ as he calls it, and his family ties. From London’s Southhall, Nayani Moorthy, has been showing her portfolio of photographs to film production offices, only to meet with the classic evasive response, “We will get in touch.” Binny Sharma, son of a prosperous Delhi family, works as a restaurant waiter to fund his struggle for fame and fortune. Most of the wannabes live in rented single rooms in and around Mumbai’s Lokhandwala complex, a thick maze of skyscrapers, and film and TV production offices. Of the thousands of hopefuls, a sizeable section enrols in acting schools. As many as 55 schools have popped up all over Lokhandwala and the surrounding neighbourhoods of Juhu, Malad, Goregaon and Borivli-Kandivli. In the course of making a 28-minute documentary, The Big Bollywood Struggle, I saw that the young dreamers long to be the next Shah Rukh Khan, Salman Khan, Katrina Kaif and Priyanka Chopra. The males join gyms to sculpt their physiques à laSalman, while females dress in flashy faux designer wear. On facing rejection, the ‘strugglers’ have no choice but to stay on in Bollywood. An overwhelming number don’t return home. They are embarrassed to accept defeat. Lingering on in anonymity, some ‘strugglers’ do find consolation in the fact that they could at least be coached by leading Bollywood celebrities — at the few acting schools which are run on ethical principles. Currently, there are a handful of institutions which may not guarantee placement for their students but at least warn them, at the very outset, that show business can be like a game of roulette. In fact, this cautionary theme has been conveyed empathetically in Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s Guddi, Ram Gopal Varma’sRangeela and Zoya Akhtar’s Luck by Chance. Children of established actors find it much easier to make it in a system where star pedigree has been a scoring point over the decades. So producer-director Rahul Rawail’s school has been in the news since Sunny Deol’s son, Karan, happens to be one of its students. Rawail not only introduced Sunny with Betaab, but also gave the first break to Kajol with Bekhudi. The school is allied to the Stella Adler School of Acting, which honed the skills of such powerhouses as Marlon Brando, Anthony Quinn, Warren Beatty and Candice Bergen. Anupam Kher’s Actor Prepares, with branches in New Delhi, Chandigarh and Chennai, is another professionally-run school with an in-house faculty and guest lecturers ranging from Mahesh Bhatt and Shabana Azmi to Urmila Matondkar. Theatre veteran Barry John from Delhi, who taught Shah Rukh Khan the ropes of acting, is now anchored in Mumbai, drawing students who want to make it in films or theatre. Roshan Taneja, legendary for coaching Anil Kapoor, Bobby Deol, Ajay Devgan, Hrithik Roshan and Dimple Kapadia, continues to attract disciples at his 48-year-old academy. Subhash Ghai’s Whistling Woods institute doesn’t have a seat to spare in its acting department. The government-subsidised Film and Television Institute, Pune, has revived its acting course but its recent graduates have still to make a mark. Meanwhile, Mumbai’s Lokhandwala becomes more crowded by the day. Action director, Shyam Kaushal, points out that quite a few hopeful actors, finding no option, turn into ‘extras’ and stuntmen. They are not visible but do eke out a daily living. Similarly, girls drift into dancing in the chorus lines of the ‘item’ numbers, while many get married, their dreams extinguished. All the acting schools charge exorbitant fees, be it for short-term or yearly courses. Strugglers can barely afford to shell out the money, often exhausting all their savings and cheques, sent by an occasionally supportive parent, within a year. Yet the influx to Bollywood rises by the day, alas without a happy ending.