Hindi cinema has discovered a ruthless truth: nothing resurrects a career quite like becoming the villain. For actors slipping out of the spotlight—or never fully owning it—the antagonist has become a second, sharper debut. Not the moustache-twirling tyrant of old, but a figure of control, silence, and calibrated violence. In this new grammar of menace, power is not declared; it is assumed. And no one embodies this shift more precisely than Akshaye Khanna.
Khanna never reached the unassailable stardom of his father, Vinod Khanna. His career was marked by critical respect, interrupted momentum, and long silences. For years, he existed on the margins of the mainstream—recognisable, admired, but rarely central. Playing the villain has changed that equation entirely. Today, among younger moviegoers, Khanna is no longer remembered for what he missed; he is feared for what he controls.
In Dhurandhar, Khanna’s antagonist does not announce himself with dialogue. He arrives through rhythm. The now-iconic walk—slow, unhurried, almost luxuriant—syncs with the FA9LA track. When he kills, there is no warning, no verbal threat. Guns rise, bodies fall, and the scene ends. The violence feels administrative, as if decided long before the camera arrived. It is this absence of performanc that lodges him in memory.
That authority gave its first look in Chhaava, where brutality sheds modern efficiency and takes on feudal weight. Here, Khanna’s violence is slower, closer, meant to humiliate as much as harm. Blades linger. Punishments are public. If Dhurandhar represents globalised power—swift and transactional—Chhaava stages cruelty as spectacle and warning. In both, Khanna’s control never wavers. Silence does the damage before the weapon.
This pattern—of villains reviving actors once thought past their peak—is becoming unmistakable. Bobby Deol’s Abrar in Animal barely speaks, yet dominates through fragments: a stare, an eruption of violence, a thundering Balkan-inflected score. Deol’s career, long adrift, snapped back into relevance overnight—not because the character was complex, but because it was overwhelming.
Earlier, Sanjay Dutt rewrote his own arc with Kancha Cheena in Agneepath. Bald, mute, and terrifyingly still, Dutt stripped villainy of swagger and replaced it with dread. The performance rebranded the actor. More recently, R Madhavan unsettled audiences in Shaitaan, weaponising charm itself. His menace lies not in volume but persuasion—evil delivered with a smile, making resistance feel futile. And even Amitabh Bachchan, the original angry young man, once found renewed fascination playing darkness in Ram Gopal Varma Ki Aag, proving that authority, once established, never truly expires.
What distinguishes these revivals is not nostalgia, but precision. The modern Hindi film villain is not chasing applause or catchphrases. He bypasses likeability entirely. He moves with certainty. He occupies space as though it belongs to him. For actors like Khanna, this has been transformative. Villainy has not merely extended his career; it has recalibrated his cultural standing.
Among a generation raised on streaming, soundtracks, and GIF-able moments, Khanna is now instantly legible. Not as a star in the old sense, but as something more durable: a symbol of control. Hindi cinema may keep reinventing its heroes, but it is the villain—measured, merciless, unforgettable—who keeps giving actors a second life.
For Deol, the antagonist role arrived precisely when the industry had stopped expecting surprise from him. “People were taken aback that Bobby Deol could actually play an antagonist,” he said. “It came at a time in my career when no one believed I could do anything beyond what I had done before.”
Film writer and critic Yasser Usman calls negative roles the fastest route to resurrection. For years, he argues, Hindi cinema trapped its heroes in righteousness—moral, predictable, safe—while global storytelling moved towards moral murk and psychological complexity. OTT-trained audiences now crave the unexpected. “Flawed, morally grey characters feel more real,” Usman notes. “For actors, stepping into the dark breaks old images and delivers the one thing viewers love most: surprise.”
There is also freedom. “Heroes carry box-office expectations, image management and fan politics,” Usman says. “Villains don’t.” That absence of burden explains why Khanna in Dhurandhar and Chhaava, Deol in Animal, and R Madhavan in Shaitaan could lean fully into menace. “It was total liberation,” Usman says. “And they went wild.”
Madhavan admits he was never the obvious choice. “It was Ajay Devgn and Vikas Bahl who thought of me,” he recalls. “Since I was playing the antagonist, there was no pressure of outcome—that itself was liberating.” He didn’t underline evil; he played velocity. “Someone in a hurry—someone no one could keep up with. You can show your darkest side and have people accept it.”
Why does this darkness land now? Psychologist and leadership coach Dr Kanan K Chikhal points inward. Carl Jung’s “shadow self,” she explains—the traits we suppress—finds safe expression through villains. “The pull isn’t about glorifying violence,” she says. “It’s emotional recognition.” Familiar faces intensify it. When actors associated with romance step into darkness, the rupture fascinates. “The violence isn’t admired—it’s the truth beneath it.”
That truth is reshaping Hindi cinema’s power structure. Villainy is no longer a detour taken late in a career; it is the destination that restores relevance. “People often draw a line between a hero and a villain. But I’ve never believed in that distinction,” says Shah Rukh Khan, tracing a throughline from Darr to Don, Anjaam and Baazigar. The darkness was always there; what’s changed is the industry’s willingness to meet it halfway. “If we, as actors, don’t explore interesting shades, films will just become predictable—the hero arrives, sings songs, fights, and leaves.” The character in his upcoming film King is, in Khan’s words, “flawed, violent, even a killer… ruthless, unapologetic, and fascinating.”
Film analyst Girish Wankhede cautions that the dark turn is not a guaranteed win. Miscasting or half-hearted writing, he notes, can alienate audiences who grew up idolising these stars, breaking trust without offering anything compelling in return. But when the gamble pays off, the impact is disproportionate. “A single powerful negative role can recalibrate a career, invigorate franchises, and leave a lasting impression,” he says. “For Bollywood, such departures from type remain some of the most exciting moments in cinema.”
Actor Chitrangda Singh has carved a niche playing women who refuse easy moral labels. In the whodunnit Raat Akeli Hai, she is Mira Bansal—composed, inscrutable, and at the centre of a brutal family murder. In Gaslight, she turns calculating as Rukmini, a royal whose charm conceals layered deceit. Singh believes these morally ambiguous roles are not a coincidence. Grey, she says, is very much the colour of the season. “What’s amazing is that nobody is writing the villain in the most boring way. The writing is getting interesting, and that’s why these characters are shining the way they are,” she says.
What’s radical now is that this appetite is no longer male territory. For decades, women were moral anchors—virtue or temptation—rarely allowed contradiction without punishment. Huma Qureshi’s Badi Didi in Delhi Crime Season 3 is emblematic—brutal, unsoftened, uninterested in apology. “I want to play varied authentic women… why is the superhero or the antagonist male—that’s a place I happily want to take,” she says. The clearest rupture arrives with Madhuri Dixit in Mrs Deshpande. Dixit, long synonymous with warmth, plays a serial killer. “It wasn’t just about being a serial killer… there were so many layers beyond,” Dixit admits.
Casting director Mukesh Chhabra calls the shift inevitable. Curated star images no longer carry currency; actors want characters that leave a mark. Viewers, too, recognise themselves in contradiction. Writer and cinephile Lakshmi Iyer frames the pull simply: there is no pure black or white. Antagonists feel fallible, human; protagonists often feel perfected. “Pretty privilege,” she adds, “often explains why we root for the antagonist.”
In a fractured world where certainty wobbles, the morally ambiguous character feels honest—not because they offer clarity, but because they admit confusion. And in that admission, Hindi cinema is quietly rewriting heroism: not as a spotless ideal, but as a reflection we recognise, however uncomfortably, as our own.
Rishi Kapoor
From ’80s–’90s romantic hero to late-career scene-stealer, Rishi Kapoor reinvented himself powerfully as a villain. His brutal Rauf Lala in Agneepath and the chilling don in D-Day redefined his legacy—an acting second innings Kapoor himself called deeply liberating and creatively rewarding
Once sidelined, Vivek Oberoi engineered a sharp comeback with a slick antagonist turn as Kaal in Krrish 3. He then locked in the reinvention down South, delivering confident villain roles in Lucifer, Vivegam, and Vinaya Vidheya Rama—reclaiming relevance through precision
Despite his matinee-idol looks, Arjun Rampal found his true voice not as a conventional hero but in darker, morally conflicted roles. From Om Shanti Om and Raajneeti to Dhurandhar, he has consistently infused menace and nuance—quietly redefining the Bollywood anti-hero
Arjun Kapoor, too, has found fresh momentum by embracing the antagonist’s mantle. His turn as Danger Lanka in Singham Again delivered a timely jolt to a faltering career, recalibrating perception and placing him in a sharper, more potent space
Sanjay Dutt rewrote his own arc with Kancha Cheena in Agneepath. Bald, mute, and terrifyingly still, Dutt stripped villainy of swagger and replaced it with dread. The performance didn’t just redefine the character; it rebranded the actor
The clearest rupture arrives with Madhuri Dixit in Mrs Deshpande, adapted from La Mante by Nagesh Kukunoor. Dixit, long synonymous with warmth, plays a serial killer
Huma Qureshi’s Badi Didi in Delhi Crime Season 3 is emblematic—brutal, unsoftened, uninterested in apology