Fighter Actor Akshay Oberoi On Reuniting With Deepika Padukone After Piku, Anil Kapoor's Advice | Exclusive

Akshay Oberoi is receiving praise for his role in Siddharth Anand’s Fighter, co-starring Hrithik Roshan, Deepika Padukone and Anil Kapoor. He played Basheer Khan, AKA Bash, a fighter pilot in the Air Dragons team. In an exclusive chat with News18 Showsha, the actor opened up on reuniting with Anand after OTT series Flesh, Anil Kapoor’s advice to him and life coming full circle.

Speaking of landing the role in Fighter, he said, “Look at the cost of fighter. I am the least known person in that. Because Karan Singh Grover is known to the public and where do we even start with Deepika, Anil Kapoor and Hrithik? The whole world knows them. But Siddharth Anand still gave me that chance to play a nice role. Sure, I earned it, but I also am grateful for him for remembering and coming through on his promise and giving me this chance to show my my talent.”

Life really has come full circle for the actor who grew up in the US and harboured a desire to be an actor in Bollywood. He said, “I grew up in New Jersey and I wanted to be an actor since I was 12 or 13. I started doing theatre when I was 13. I was doing theatre in a local town – in Morristown – and my father picked me up one evening from rehearsals and he took me to watch Kaho Naa Pyar Hai. And he said, ‘dekho yeh India ka next superstar hone wala hai’. I left that theatre thinking, Okay, this is it, I’m going to move to India. I want to be an Indian actor. I thought ‘America mein mere jaisa koi dikhta nahi hai’. At least I could I could relate to what I saw on screen! Deepika and I worked in Piku and I featured in a tiny role. With AK sir, I have done Thar – again, it was a two-minute role. They’ve seen me kind of slowly climb up. And here, I now have this big full fledged role in this big mega budget movie.”

Recalling an advice that Anil Kapoor gave him, Akshay said, “He said, ‘you have to like keep working till the end of time. Ugly, bad, nice, very good – whatever it is, never take a break. The day you walk away from the industry for even a little bit or you drop a project, people start to forget you very fast. Even when you’re Anil Kapoor or Amitabh Bachchan’. It really stayed with me.”