Vidyut Jammwal On His Bollywood Journey

Brut India

It's been a decade since Vidyut Jammwal began acting in films. How did a child who was fascinated by Kalaripayattu reach where he is today? Jammwal reveals it all in this candid interview with Brut.

Transcript

00:00How we play with toys, I was playing with swords and sticks.

00:05You don't need to be somebody's son to be a star.

00:09You need to be somebody's son, but not somebody from Bollywood.

00:30With me, I was, like how we play with toys, I was playing with swords and sticks.

00:43Because when you don't know that they can hurt you, they will not hurt you.

00:47When you're not so aware of being careful, it will not bother you at all.

00:52So for me, playing with a sword or playing with a stick, nobody stopped me saying, oh,

00:56it might hurt you.

00:57But a lot of things that a lot of people didn't do, by the time I was nine, I could do a lot

01:01of things that people couldn't do.

01:04Like, for example, people could tell you that a boy of plus five could tell you what is

01:118-5, 8-5 equals to 40.

01:16I couldn't really do it very well, but I could tell you that if I press over here, you might

01:21get a concussion or you might just faint.

01:25And if you just press over here, you might just heal yourself.

01:29I knew about the pituitary gland.

01:31I knew about all the thyroid, the hypothalamus.

01:35I was studying that without really being told that this is going to be a part of your curriculum

01:39much later in life.

01:40So when I was learning the healing process, like if I was training with a sword and if

01:45I cut myself, I knew that there are no stitches really required.

01:49You could just use haldi, a lot of it, and the blood's going to stop.

01:52So in Kalaripayattu, they don't teach you about only fighting or hitting or killing

01:56people.

01:57They teach you how to heal first.

01:58Because Kalaripayattu is about healing people rather than hurting them.

02:07It was an ambition that somehow I have to make sure that everybody in this world knows

02:11about Kalaripayattu and really that's how the journey started.

02:14I knew I have to get into movies and I want to do action.

02:17It didn't matter whether I was a hero, I was a villain, I was a stuntman.

02:21It really didn't matter.

02:22But I just wanted to do action and tell everybody that this is what I do.

02:30There were roles where you couldn't even see me.

02:32I was one of the bad guys.

02:35But I really did everything that was meant to be done.

02:38And the journey kept moving, moving from a stuntman to a little bad guy, to a better

02:44bad guy, to the worst guy, to being the villain.

02:49Honestly, I got to know this world struggle only when I came to Bombay.

02:53I didn't know it existed.

02:55For a martial artist, when I do a somersault or I do a kick, I have failed a thousand times

03:01before I really got it right.

03:03So if that is the struggle, then every human being has to go through it.

03:07But when I came to Bombay and they said, Oh my God, there's a lot of struggle.

03:10You got to be careful.

03:11You got to be wise.

03:12I just didn't understand what it meant.

03:19I was not the leading villain in the movies.

03:23So every time I came on the set and they said, Okay, what can you do?

03:26So like all this, they're like, Okay, what do you think you want to do here?

03:30So I was like, I think this will make it look really nice.

03:33So every time I saw the screen, I was like, Wow, I've done a good job.

03:36And what normally I did at that time, not many people were doing it.

03:41So only I had to do it.

03:42In 2013, when we had Commando 1, before that, there was not a single person who was doing

03:48realistic action of that.

03:51The heroes weren't really doing the stunts.

03:52Some of them were, but not everybody.

03:55When we decided to do Commando 1, the first thing was, I will do everything.

04:00I will choreograph it.

04:01I will make it look different.

04:02I will make them believe that when the hero does it, he really does it.

04:06When he punches, he really punches.

04:08And that's how we started.

04:13So the Jackie Chan Awards are the Oscars of action.

04:18It's a great feeling.

04:19First of all, Jackie Chan is somebody who everybody knows.

04:21When you meet the legend himself, you know why he's a legend.

04:26It was a great feeling.

04:27For me, it was a matter of great pride because when he called me up on the stage and they

04:32said, Vidyut Jambwal, India, Kalaripayattu, for me, it was a bigger high than anything

04:37that I've experienced.

04:38Because first of all, they got it right, Kalaripayattu.

04:41And the Chinese know that this man, Bodhidharma, who moved from the south of India into China,

04:48started the Shaolin Temple, started the Zen philosophy, is an Indian guy.

04:53So for me, it's a matter of great pride when somebody acknowledges that was my ambition

04:57and I felt very proud that I did something for the country.

05:05So I used to do a lot of self-defense workshops.

05:09I used to travel to different cities and I want to really do this now because nothing

05:13has changed.

05:15The number of rape cases are exactly the same.

05:17We create a lot of brouhaha about, oh my God, this should not happen.

05:20Oh my God.

05:22Everybody gets together.

05:24Then the rape victims get caught and then everybody forgets.

05:29What we need to do is we need to equip our women, our men to be better people.

05:34And that's what I want to do now.

05:35I want to start these self-defense classes.

05:37I want to travel the whole country.

05:39I want to travel the world, talking about self-defense, making them aware how to get

05:43out of it.

05:48It's been amazing.

05:49You think of something and then when you live that something, there's not a bigger experience

05:55than that.

05:56It's like, I want to go to Bombay.

06:02The moment you land into the city and you're like, wow, tick.

06:06I wish I had a small role in an advertisement.

06:12And then you get it and you tick mark it.

06:14It's a dream.

06:15Keep living it.

06:16Make it very small.

06:17Step by step.

06:18People want to just jump.

06:19So these 10 years have been step by step and incredible.

06:23I haven't lost a single moment saying, oh, this has not been good.

06:27This has not been bad.

06:29Some people have not been so amazing, but some people have been spectacularly amazing.

06:34Some people just did not help me, but some people just came from anywhere.

06:39You don't need to be somebody's son to be a star.

06:43You need to be somebody's son, but not somebody from Bollywood.

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