MUMBAI: Despite coming from a film making family, actor Uday Chopra failed to connect with the audience.
He made his acting debut in his brother Aditya Chopra’s directorial ‘Mohabbatein’ in 2000. The film was a hit and Uday’s acting skills were appreciated. However, his real struggle started post-‘Mohabbatein’. He featured in a couple of films like ‘Mere Yaar Ki Shaadi Hai’, the ‘Dhoom’ franchise and ‘Neal ‘n’ Nikki’ but failed to leave an impression on the audience’s minds.
And now in Netflix’s recent docu-series ‘The Romantics’, Aditya talks about nepotism and why Uday Chopra couldn’t go far in his acting career.
He said, “My brother is an actor and he’s not a very successful actor. Now, here is the son of one of the biggest filmmakers, he’s the brother of a very big filmmaker. Imagine a company like YRF, that has probably launched the most newcomers, and we could not make him a star.
Why could we not do it for our own? Because the bottom line is, only an audience will decide, ‘I like this person, I want to see this person’. No one else can decide that.”
Following this, Uday opened up about his career.
“When Dhoom happened, I was still trying to be a mainstream actor. I should have taken Ali as an example and done roles like that,” Uday said.
The Mohabbatein actor further said that he received many offers, but he refused them all, as he “was trying to get into a space” that he agreed wasn’t meant for him. “When I started acting, I was very naive. I thought everyone would like me. I didn’t imagine that people might not like me.” He referred to the constant discussion around him and how he wasn’t a ‘successful actor’, and was called a ‘child of nepotism’. “It did affect me a lot,” Uday admitted.
‘The Romantics’, which celebrates the legacy of filmmaker Yash Chopra, is streaming on Netflix. (ANI)