Don't feel like a hero, call me an actor: Rajkummar Rao

Mumbai: Actor Rajkummar Rao says he always feels like an actor and not a “hero”, a term he prefers should be reserved for Army people fighting at the border. Rao says he has never tried to be a hero nor does he understand what it means. 

“I don’t know how a hero feels, honestly. I feel like an actor, I wanted to be an actor. I always want to feel just like an actor. I don’t know this ‘hero’ term. If someone comes to me with a script and says ‘sir this hero…’ I’m like ‘is there a name or he is just called a hero?’ 

“We are not heroes. Heroes are people fighting for us at the border. We are not heroes we are just doing our job,” the actor told reporters last night at the trailer launch of his upcoming horror-comedy “Stree”. 

Rao, who has emerged as one of the most versatile actors in Bollywood in recent times, said the definition of “hero” has undergone a change today with cinema. 

“The speed at which cinema is changing, the definition of hero is also changing. Even a big superstar like Aamir sir plays the role of a father. There’s action genre, where you have to show body and do stunts, so you may call that a hero (centric genre). 

“But now character-driven stories are there. Content is getting its due respect. Our audience wants to see characters on screen and want to see actors play new roles, adapt different body language,” he added. 

The film, which also stars Shraddha Kapoor, Pankaj Tripathi, Aparshakti Khurana and Abhishek Banerjee, is directed by Amar Kaushik and jointly produced by Dinesh Vijan and, Raj Nidimoru and Krishna DK.

Nidimoru said the story of a lady ghost haunting men in a small town originated from something he experienced in college. 

“We (Nidimoru and DK) experienced it in our home town in Tirupati, Andhra Pradesh. We were studying there. But then we heard it was happening in Bangalore, North India and even in Thailand. 

“It was something people picked up. It’s an urban legend, but who started it, who can prove it, that’s the fun of the film,” he said.  “Stree” is scheduled to be released on August 31.