One glance at Hrithik Roshan today and it’s hard to believe that this is his 23rd year (!) as a Hindi film actor. I don’t just mean the chiselled greying, the wild beards or the ageless physique. (Or maybe I do. A little.). But it’s also the fact that Roshan was the last bonafide Bollywood superstar, a nationwide phenomenon that bridged the old to the new at the turn of the millenium. His barnstorming debut in Kaho Na…Pyaar Hai (2000) changed the way the commercial Hindi movie hero looked, moved and grooved: The era of the thirst trap was officially upon us.
He struggled to keep the brawny flag flying during his initial boom-or-bust phase – OTT (over-the-top) was still an adjective back then, thanks to his ultra-hyper turns in a clutch of infamously dreadful romantic dramas. But Roshan soldiered on, reinventing himself with timely old-school potboilers, somewhat preserving the sort of vintage big-screen panache that had all but disappeared with the advent of the ‘content’ age. Once newer generations of biceps emerged, Roshan’s value as a multiplex-mass hybrid, an action hero who could act and a specialist all-rounder dawned on audiences grappling with the intellectual demonetization of masala entertainment. His looks may have prevented many from taking him too seriously as an actor, but his reputation as a performer was shaped by the school of hard knocks.
Roshan’s 25th film, Vikram Vedha, seems like the perfect excuse to take stock of a career that has blown hot, cold and everything in between. At the risk of sounding like a nostalgic boomer, they don’t make (or break) ’em like him anymore. On that note, here are eight of my favourite performances by Hrithik Roshan, ranked in ascending order of preference: