BENGALURU: Even after acting alongside big names in Hollywood, Rohan Gurbaxani feels shy when people ask him about what it means to him to be living his Hollywood dream. The Bengaluru boy, after all, has shared screen space with Alec Baldwin, Malin Akerman and Bella Thorne in Chick Fight, the action comedy that was released last week.
Ask him about acting alongside Baldwin and he says it was a “surreal” feeling, with him soaking the same excitement that any of the star’s fans would have. “This was my first film, and he has done many. But we had this common ground where he also went to NYU and one of his professors taught me too. That was a nice conversation-starter with him. I, of course, observed him a lot, and learnt from him. He was such an approachable person,” says the 23-year-old.
The newbie is now looking forward to his next film, Knuckledust, which is an action thriller releasing in December. It stars Moe Dunford and Gethin Anthony. The ball doesn’t stop rolling here. In 2021, he has two releases – RED 48, featuring John Malkovich and Tyrese Gibson; and Confession, starring Sarah Hay. Gurbaxani may be currently living the life many dream of, but for him, acting in Hollywood was never the goal. “My initial dream, since I was in Class 8, was to go to New York.
I still don’t know why I picked the city. I never even participated in plays, but it was just a far-fetched dream,” says Gurbaxani, who has a Bachelors in Fine Arts from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. He has also trained at the Lee Strasberg Theatre & Film Institute, Stonestreet Studios, and attended the Tisch Stanislavsky and Brecht program in Berlin.
While he continues to revel in the experience, it was not easy for him to live away from home, “in isolation”. Luckily, he says, by the third month, the shoot for RED 48 had begun. “It was an interesting experience as we underwent three Covid tests every week. By the end, I had around taken 10 tests. There were Covid supervisors on the sets,” says Gurbaxani, who was a part-time Covid supervisor as well.
He calls it unsettling to be based in two cities – New York and Bengaluru – but now Gurbaxani is back home after two years and is glad he could spend Deepavali with his family here. And the young lad is all praise for the city he grew up in.
“In Bangalore, I studied in two schools. I initially started off in a public school and then Class 8 onwards, I moved to an international school. I loved to dance and got a chance to join troupes. I don’t think my life would have been the same if any of these things had not happened,” explains Gurbaxani, who is currently also looking at projects back home.