Dhanush Recalls Being Mocked For His Appearance During Early Days; 'I Am Very Proud Of The Way I Handled It'

South star Dhanush made his Hindi film debut with Aanand L Rai's Raanjhanaa in 2013. Last seen in Atrangi Re (2021) for which he received rave reviews for his performance, the actor in his recent interview with a leading portal revealed that he was severely mocked by many naysayers and trolls for his appearance at the beginning of his career.

Recalling his early days and how he is proud of the way he handled all the criticism, the Shamitabh star told Filmfare, "I started really young, I was 16 when I started. I faced a lot of criticism for my appearance, for the way I look. I was greeted with a lot of blockbuster success initially and then I had to go through a lot of failures where they had to write me off and then I had to come back. All this happened when I was very young and now I am more mature and I have experience and I know how to handle it better. But I am very proud of the way I handled it when I was 17, 18, 19, 20 years old when I didn't know this world, had nobody to guide me, had no experience, no maturity and that teenager handled it pretty brilliantly. I feel so, yes."

The actor revealed that he became an accidental actor and said, "I never wanted to be an actor . . . my heart was not here. I was kind of forced into acting at a very young age."

He continued, "When I started, I wasn't into it. And then I met this legendary filmmaker, Balu Mahendra, who is an amazing cinematographer as well. So, he made a film with me and when we were talking, he said that you are too young right now - I was 19 then - you don't see what I see in you, you should take this seriously, you have a gift, I hope you see it soon and when somebody like that tells you this . . . then I thought that maybe I have a gift and I took it seriously. And I worked on it. After five to six years, I realised that sometimes you identify your calling and sometimes your calling identifies you and I now know that I couldn't have done anything else."

Further, Dhanush admitted that he is affected by both success and failure as a normal human being. Talking about how he deals with failure, the actor said that he tries to learn from them so that he doesn't make the same mistakes again. Similarly, he doesn't let success affect the decisions he makes for the future.