Did you know what was the first role ‘sweet boy’ Ayushmann Khurrana played on-stage?

Shubh Mangal Saavdhan Actor Ayushmann Khurrana, who will be playing a character with grey shades in his next film, reveals that he mostly played such roles in his theatre days.

Sweet, charming, guy-next-door — that’s how actor Ayushmann Khurrana usually comes across, probably because of the image he has built through his roles in films such as Vicky Donor (2012), Dum Laga Ke Haisha (2015) and Shubh Mangal Saavdhan. But the actor feels that now is the perfect time to make the shift to different kinds of roles.

Actor Ayushmann Khurrana will be playing the role of a visually-challenged pianist in Sriram Raghavan’s film.

But now the actor is all set to take the audience by surprise with his upcoming thriller film, tentatively titled Shoot The Piano Player, where he plays the role of a visually impaired pianist. The actor reveals that his character has grey shades. “I come across as a sweet boy, but I have mostly played such grey characters in theatre. I have been doing such roles from my childhood, since I started doing theatre. My first role ever was Shylock in the Merchant Of Venice, then I played Ashwathhama in Dharamveer Bharti’s Andha Yug — all these were grey, and I got a lot of awards for them. So, I had always been waiting for a thriller film,” he says.

To state the obvious, Ayushmann had an excellent year professionally. His films were successful at the box-office, and the critics loved him. But success puts more pressure on you than failures. Bouncing back from the latter is relatively easy than maintaining one’s position at the top. Ask the actor if that’s true, and he says, “I don’t know. As an artist, if your work is appreciated, you have that thing inside you that ‘Okay, I am doing a decent job’. But working or not working of a film is incidental. Having said that, it gives you confidence when your films work as an actor. You are known as a bankable star that way.”

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