Sunny Kaushal has followed into the footsteps of his father and elder brother. Vicky Kaushal’s younger brother and action director Shyam Kaushal’s son, Sunny ventured into acting with Bhangra Paa Le which didn’t garner much attention at the box office. But the young actor is confident that he will strike gold someday.
The actor started off as an assistant director on films such as My Friend Pinto in 2011 and Ali Abbas Zafar’s Gunday in 2014. Later, he made his debut with the blink-and-miss film Sunshine Music Tours And Travels in 2016. He has also worked in the web series Love At First Sight. It was only in 2018 that Sunny got recognition when he was chosen to play one of the pivotal characters in Reema Kagti’s Gold.
Talking about what’s in the pipeline Sunny says, “I am choosing the best and pitching myself to good directors. I call up directors and ask them for work. The best is yet to come. I know that I can’t be laid back and wait for someone to approach me.” His calendar for 2020 includes two love stories—Nikhil Nagesh Bhatt’s Hurdang with Nushrat Bharucha and Vijay Varma in the lead and director Kunal Deshmukh’s Shiddat starring Radhika Madan, Mohit Raina and Diana Penty.
The 30-year-old reveals, “Shiddat is about the journey of a boy who is all set to achieve his goals. It’s based on hockey. I am also doing director Kabir Khan’s The Forgotten Army—Azaadi Ke Liye for Amazon. I play Captain Surendra Sodhi, who was part of the Indian National Army (INA), an armed force formed by Indian nationalists in 1942 in Southeast Asia during World War II. He was captured during World War II. It’s about how he shifted from the British Army to the INA. There is also a love angle. It’s a fictional character based on three different people.”
Sunny reveals that he has never done a biopic earlier so he had to thoroughly rely on Khan’s vision for the web series. “Even in Gold I played a fictional character so I had no reference points. It was a huge responsibility and I had to be within stipulated boundaries. I had to simply follow what the director has sketched for me,” explains the actor.
The actor once aspired to become a chartered accountant, but soon gave it up and found his calling in entertainment. “My father had cautioned us brothers that he will not be able to help us as he was an action director. When he started off way back as an action director in 1988 with films such as Indrajaal, he didn’t know anyone in the industry. It was much later when he got films such as Khiladi and Yodha that he gained recognition. It took him a while to be known in the industry.
He wanted us to carve out our own paths. He didn’t have any godfather. It was sheer hard work and talent that took him where he is today.”
A believer in slow and steady winning the race, Sunny says that he is confident that his luck will pay off some day. “My brother Vicky also started off with small films such as Masaan and Zubaan. He had to work hard to get where he is.” Talking more about his bond with his brother, the 30-year-old says, “We are good friends and share everything. He is just a year older to me but at times he acts like my father. When we were kids, he would always chide me saying he is one year and four months older than me, hence he knows life better. We would fight over small things but he is very protective about me and we can’t live without each other. We try to spend as much time with each other. He always has my back. One advice he has got from his brother?
“He tells me to simply work hard and do it with honesty.”