Vivek Oberoi Recalls Being Called Crazy For Signing Saathiya; 'People Told Me It Would Be A Career-Killer'

Unlike most debutants, Vivek Oberoi stepped into the Hindi film industry with an unconventional role in Ram Gopal Varma's Company in 2002. The actor walked away with several accolades for his gangster act in this film.

In the same year, Vivek took the audience by pleasant surprise when he channeled his inner lover boy in Shaad Ali's romantic drama Saathiya in which he played the role of Rani Mukerji's husband. Recently, in a tete-a-tete with a leading daily, Vivek opened up about how he was advised against taking up Saathiya. The actor revealed that everyone including his mentor Ram Gopal Varma who launched him in Company, thought of it as a terrible decision.

Vivek told ETimes, "It was really funny, because when I made a decision to do Saathiya,'everyone, including my mentor RGV, was really upset and told me that it was a terrible decision. They told me it's a career killer and that I was crazy. I had just established myself as a man's man and people advised me to continue doing action movies."

However, Vivek was adamant about doing the film and continued, "I was an actor. I just wanted to do every different colour of cinema. Saathiya, to me, was a really interesting challenge. Shaad (Ali) and I have been friends for eons and suddenly he told me that I had to do a film with him. I saw the original, spoke to Mani sir and that was it!"

Talking about how Saathiya changed people's perception about him as an actor, Vivek shared, "Post the success of Saathiya, it was very different because then everybody started saying, 'Oh wow, you've done this, now only do love stories, don't do anything else'. The perception, until then, was that this one guy does one kind of cinema, the other guy does the other kind of cinema. You don't mix the two. But I didn't want to bind myself in a stereotype. And I really enjoyed coming out from an extreme character like 'Chandu' to playing Aditya in Saathiya, which was even more difficult because there was no homework I could do.

In the same interview, when asked if regretted turning down any film, the actor revealed, "In the early stages, yes, there were a few I couldn't end up doing. But I guess every actor has these films in his career, which he ends up not doing and somebody else does. In my case, I also got the benefit of other actors not doing those roles. For both Company and Saathiya, I was not the first choice. So, that helped me make my career too. Such things happen in the industry all the time."

Speaking about movies, Vivek Oberoi was last seen in 2019 film PM Narendra Modi. The film was heavily panned by the critics and the audience.