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BizAsia looks back at 25 years of Bobby Deol in Bollywood

Rewinding the clock back to the 1995 Filmfare edition, in which a major announcement was made about the debut of Bobby Deol, son of Dharmendra along with Twinkle Khanna, Rajesh Khanna and Dimple’s daughter in ‘Barsaat’.

As Bobby Deol descended on screens as ‘Badal’, his boyish good looks won him hearts, as he took home the best debutants trophy.

Recalling the time, Bobby says, “Everything was exclusive and had its charm, to get a glimpse of an actor was a huge deal. Now, its all changed , you have to talk about yourself all the time, constantly posting and talking about yourself”.

He seemed to be the anti thesis of his brawny action hero brother Sunny. Bobby’s breakthrough role came with the suspense thriller ‘Gupt’ and with his “Italian Good Looks”, words by several scribes, not mine he was the perfect urbane hero.

He was the hero with whom many a heroine made her debut, Aishwarya Rai in ‘Aur Pyaar Ho Gaya’, Neha in ‘Kareeb’ and Preity Zinta in ‘Soldier’, the actor said, “I know many made their debut opposite me , I don’t know if I was lucky for them but I think I made them comfortable. I knew Preity before she became an actor and she had told me this is not the profession for me , am going to be a psychologist and one day I walk into Shekhar Kapoor’s office she was giving a screen test and before you knew she was my heroine in Soldier,” Bobby said with a laugh.

As he completes 25 years in the industry, it’s not been an easy ride for the actor, a series of flops and his own self imposed exile due to lack of work took its toll. Bobby candid about his struggle said, “I went through a bad time, was not getting the kind of work I wanted and started blaming the world. I started pitying myself, alcohol played a bad role in my life at that moment I was swept away from my reality. One day seeing my parents, wife and children standing by me and supporting me through this dark phase I told myself, this is it. I need to take stock of my life, it was a moment when I snapped and decided to be positive and take charge of my life,” Bobby admits with honesty.

The actor who made his digital debut with Shah Rukh Khan’s ‘Class of 83’ playing the nonsense cop Dean Vijay Singh on Netflix and the conman turn god-man in Prakash Jha’s series ‘Aashram’ says he is enjoying his second innings and is more than happy to embrace the new medium and do work which is beyond his comfort zone, “You need to ask for work, grab work its not going to come to you. Rejections will happen, take it in your stride but don’t lose heart”.