>>•• 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.
» •• Rakhi Sawant •• «Born to an ACP father who despised Bollywood, Sawant had a tough time for the very start. It took the strong-willed actress awhile to get herself into an item-girl slot, following which her father left the house in protest, and she now lives with her mother.
The real struggle lay in Sawant setting out to purchase the finest body money could buy, and amazingly being able to borrow funds to finance her plastic surgeries. Today, she's an icon in her own right.
» •• 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.
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.
» •• Manoj Bajpai •• «In a way, his struggle still continues. Hailing from Champaran in Bihar, Bajpai made it onto the the theatre circuit in Delhi, following which he struggled in various television serials as he searched for a big movie break.
Despite appearances in important films like Droh Kaal and Bandit Queen, his breakthrough role was in Ram Gopal Varma's Satya, where he played mobster Bhiku Mhatre. He's still around, and yet prominent roles continue to avoid him.
» •• Mallika Sherawat•• «Born Reema Lamba, the Haryanvi stunner picked her new name so as not to be lost in a generic sea of Reemas. Mallika means Empress, and Sherawat is her mother's maiden name.
Hailing from Haryana, Mallika didn't have it easy with her parents opposed to her acting career, and there have been unconfirmed murmurings about a marriage she allegedly walked out of. Entering Bollywood too wasn't easy, the actress first appearing in a music video for Bhangra singer Surjit Bindrakhia. Then, after a cameo in Jeena Sirf Mere Liye, Sherawat popped up in Khwahish, after which she shook the industry with her aggressive sexuality and unbridled tongue. Once Mallika entered Bollywood, she made sure nobody could ignore her, smalltown girl or not.
» ••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.
» •• Govinda •• «Govinda's story would have been much smoother. His mother Nirmala Devi was a famed classical vocalist from Banaras, while father Arun Kumar Ahuja was an actor in the 1940s. All was well until the one film Ahuja produced turned out to be a flop, and Arun's health deteriorated.
The family moved from Bombay's swank Carter Road area to the far-flung Virar suburb. Govinda graduated studying Commerce, but wasn't able to get a job. Around this time, Govinda watched Saturday Night Fever and worked hard to make a VHS tape promo of himself. Soon a couple of TV ads came, after which the film floodgates opened.
» •• Farah Khan •• «Khan's mother Menaka was sister to Honey and Daisy Irani, but her father Kamran Khan passed away while Farah was still young. She soon became the breadwinner of the family, raising her brother Sajid who went on to become a television host (and more recently, director) while she became a top-rung choreographer.
Farah waited for three years to get SRK's okay on her first film, Main Hoon Na, which turned out to be a massive success -- eclipsed soon by her superhit second film, Om Shanti Om.
» •• Akshay Kumar •• «Rajiv Hari Om Bhatia did it the hard way. A boy from Amritsar, he was raised first in Chandni Chowk before living in Mumbai's Koliwada area. He was always good in sports, and the boy went to Bangkok to study martial arts. This was a time when he worked as a chef abroad.
He started teaching martial arts in Mumbai on his return, and one of his students was a photographer who suggested Akshay look at modelling as a career option. He realised that modelling was a much more financially viable option, and films were a natural progression from that. His second film, Khiladi, was a smash hit, and the rest is ongoing history.
