His suave looks and articulate thoughts may add to his heroic appeal, but this Rajasthani lad puts it straight, “I am not vying to become a hero, a villain gets shot, hit in the head and still fights. I love to portray that part, for that I would like to die in 50-60 different ways in different movies.”
Making his debut in a negative role in 2014’s first youth-oriented film Yaariyan, Vikas Verma, shares his journey from Kota in Rajasthan to the rugged mountainous terrain of Cape Town where a part of Yaariyan was shot.
He was only 15 when the acting bug bit him, recollects Vikas, “I was browsing through the newspaper where I read about the auditions in Kota for an acting company in Mumbai. I went there with my brother and enacted Deewar’s famous dialogue ‘Khush toh bahut hogey tum’,” adding that he was no less than a disaster at acting! But he tagged along with his brother to polish his skills in Mumbai and got duped by an acting training academy, reminisced Vikas humorously.
What then? The young lad went back to his town to complete his Class 12 and made it to B.Com in one of Delhi’s most prestigious college, Shri Ram College of Commerce (SRCC). Putting an end to his acting career, asked Metrolife? “No, that’s where I started acting for real. My first attempt at acting was at Dilli Haat which fetched me a sum of Rs 3,000, enough to entice a student of my age,” says the 26-year-old. Then on he started getting modelling assignments, but decided on moving to Mumbai to pursue his dream to act.
After cameos in shows such as Left Right Left and Jassi Jaisi Koi Nahin, he started questioning his acting skills as he was snubbed on the sets of these shows. “Only when I won Zoom’s Fashion Star title in 2009, that I got my lost confidence back again,” reflects the artiste who is currently working in a Punjabi movie Kirpaan.
The young talent tries to throw in a Punjabi dialogue to show his natural flair at picking up languages and adds, “Though I loved all my negative roles, be it in the show Jhansi ki Rani or Yaariyan, I would want to try out comedy,” he signs off while sharing, “Had a movie called Phillum City released in 2010, you would have seen me rolling the audience in the aisles in my first act.”