Manoj Bajpayee, who has won three National Film Awards for acting, is among the few stars whose careers have got a new lease of life after the advent of OTT. Manoj Bajpayee, who has become one of the top OTT actors after two seasons of his series ‘The Family Man’, is also one of the most expensive stars of this medium these days. However, his career on the big screen had almost reached the margins if seen according to the films of the last five years. But, now he is in a new spirit and says that one day he can write his entire Ram story in his autobiography too.
Manoj Bajpayee
Manoj Bajpayee has struggled a lot in Hindi cinema in the last five years. In the year 2016, his praiseworthy films like ‘Aligarh’ and ‘Budhiya Singh – Born to Run’ were released but like ‘Traffic’ and ‘Saat Uchkke’, they too could not get box office success. After this, the same fate happened with ‘Naam Shabana’, ‘Sarkar 3’ and ‘Rukh’.
Manoj Bajpayee
The year 2018 was a mixed one for Manoj Bajpayee. While director Neeraj Pandey’s famous film ‘Aiyaary’ flopped, his branding suffered a lot, while in ‘Baaghi 2’ and ‘Satyamev Jayate’, he was well-liked by the people. The film ‘Bhosale’ made in the same year won him the third National Film Award.
Manoj Bajpayee also believes that his journey has never been a set of flowers. People get to know about him only as much as he can tell in a short interview. Manoj says, “Someday I will write my autobiography then everyone will know how this journey was. I have seen many ups and downs in my career. And, getting to where I now have not been easy for an artist like me without a film background.”
In the year 2019, Manoj Bajpayee appeared in the film ‘Sonchiriya’ opposite the late actor Sushant Singh Rajput and after that, his three consecutive films and ‘Mrs. Serial Killer’, ‘Suraj Pe Mangal Bhari’ and ‘Silence’ failed to captivate the audience. His other film ‘Dial 100’ is being released directly on OTT. Manoj is very optimistic about this film and says, “The past should be taken as the past and move on. There is a lot of competition in the film industry today. Here those who try to come up with self-respect and confidence have many enemies. I find it difficult to adapt myself to others because I have been brought up in such a way that I cannot compromise on self-esteem.”
Manoj Bajpayee
How does it feel when new-age actors like Rajkummar Rao describe him as their role model and come to try their luck in plot-based cinema after watching his films? Manoj Bajpayee says, “It is okay to see someone else in acting, but it is not enough courage to come here. Acting is a penance. I have been working there for more than two and a half decades and still, my struggle continues. There are all kinds of struggles here, there is a struggle to get work, apart from this, the struggle also goes on to take your work to the people, to be heard properly among the right people. I can say that I have found the place where I am today through many struggles and now the struggle continues to maintain this place”.