Bollywood actor Shahid Kapoor, who made his debut with the 2003 film Ishq-Vishq, has opened up about how he struggled to get films initially. Shahid also shared an interesting story about how it was difficult for him to convince the makers of Jab We Met to let him wear glasses. In the film, Shahid played the character Aditya Kashyap who is rather subdued in front of Kareena Kapoor’s vivacious Geet.
In an interview with Film Companion, Shahid said, “I fought with everybody. I was like, ‘I want to wear glasses for this,’ and everybody’s like, ‘Are you mad?’ Hero glasses thodi pehenta hai? Tu gaana kaise gayega?” (Hero does not wear glasses, how will you sing?) Shahid said that he had to explain to the makers that Aditya’s character was suicidal at the beginning of the film and wanted to jump off a train. The actor also told them that he would remove the glasses when he had to sing. However, the response he got was, “Are you mad? This is a love story.”
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The actor continued, “I felt like that will at least help people see me in a different way. Otherwise, I was always looking the same in every film of mine. And then I started making much bigger physical changes because it kind of empowered me to make more decisions. Like Kaminey was my first complete transition from what people were used to seeing me – usually clean-shaven and very boyish.”
Shahid also opened up about the time when no one was casting him. The actor said, “Even after my first film became a hit, nobody was casting me because they looked at me and they said, ‘We don’t write for guys who look like you. We write for guys who have, you know, like eight years older, who are men. We don’t write for boys.”
Also starring Kareena Kapoor Khan, Jab We Met was helmed by Imtiaz Ali.
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