Daily Times

Bollywood is witnessing a rising trend of adapting real-life stories for biopics but Akshay Kumar says he would never make a movie on himself. Recently, Rajkumar Hirani’s Sanju, a biopic on Sanjay Dutt, did great business at the box office but was criticised for whitewashing the actor’s image. “I would never ever make a biopic on myself and I will never write a book on myself,” Akshay said in an interview.

“There are so many amazing stories in history, like Tapan Das (his character in Gold), Arunachalam Muruganantham on whose life Padman was based, who have steered India in a positive direction. I would be a fool to make a biopic on myself. I would never even think of it, it will be a shallow thing to do for myself. I want to make biopic on real heroes and not reel heroes,” he added.

Hindi cinema has been churning out biopics one after the other, with a string of films such as Super 30, Manto, Manikarnika: The Queen of Jhansi, a film on Olympic champion Abhinav Bindra and Prime Minister Narendra Modi already lined-up for theatrical release.

Asked if the industry is going overboard with biopics, Akshay said, “It is a known (fact) in our industry that if something works, almost everyone does the same thing and this is not just about biopic or sports biopic or something else. If a few films fail, everyone will run after something else.”

Besides Gold, the actor also has 2.0, Housefull 4 and Kesari in his kitty.

Published in Daily Times, July 30^th 2018.