Rajkummar Rao

Some Lesser Known Facts About Rajkummar Rao

• Does Rajkummar Rao smoke?: No

• Does Rajkummar Rao drink alcohol?: No

• Rajkummar was born into a middle-class movie enthusiast joint family of Prem Nagar in Gurugram.

  

• Growing up, he was fascinated by Shah Rukh Khan, Aamir Khan, and Manoj Bajpayee. He was passionate about Bollywood to such as extent that he used to imitate Aamir Khan’s train stunt from ‘Ghulam’ (1998).
  

• When he was in 5th standard, he did training in martial arts and was a national level gold medalist in Taekwondo.

• He was fond of music since his childhood and wanted to make a career in it. Moreover, when he was 16 years old, he auditioned for a dance reality show in Mumbai.

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#JummaChumma with @patralekhaa #Bangkok video credit by my dear friend @vivek_daschaudhary

A post shared by Raj Kummar Rao (@rajkummar_rao) on Dec 30, 2017 at 9:52am PST

• He started acting in his 10th standard with school plays and continued doing plays in college as well. He had a rigorous schedule in college days; as every day he used to do a travelling of 4-5 hours from Gurugram to Atma Ram Sanatan Dharma College in south Delhi, and then, to attend his theatre classes at Mandi House, before returning back home at late night.

  

• While he was working at a Delhi-based theatre group ‘Kshitij’ for a year, his senior, Mukesh Chhabra was very much impressed with his acting, who later cast Rajkummar in two of his breakthrough films, ‘Kai Po Che’ (2013) and ‘Shahid’ (2013).

• He was born as “Raj Kumar Yadav,” but on the suggestion of her mother, based upon numerology, he changed it to “Rajkummar Rao.”

• He first met Patralekha at FTII but fell in love during the making of a short film. Later, she made her acting debut with him in ‘CityLights’ (2014).

  

• After completing his course from the FTII, he moved to Mumbai in 2008, and during his struggling days, he used to get small roles in ads.

• While talking about his struggling days in an interview, he said,
  

  It used to be tough times for me. I come from a very humble middle-class background and there was a time in school when I didn’t have money and my teachers paid my school fees for two years. When I came to the city, we were living in a really small house. I was paying Rs 7000 of my share which I thought was too much. I needed around 15-20000 every month to survive and there were times I would get a notification that I have only 18 rupees left in my account. My friend would have 23 rupees.”

• He made his first Bollywood appearance as a “News Reader” in the film ‘Rann’ (2010), starring Amitabh Bachchan and Paresh Rawal. For this role, he was paid around Rs. 3000.

• After giving numerous auditions for one and a half years, he earned his debut role in Ekta Kapoor‘s ‘Love Sex Aur Dhokha’ (2010).

• He got just Rs. 16,000 remunerations for his first film ‘Love Sex Aur Dhokha.’

• He did the film ‘Talaash’ (2012) just to share the screen space with one of his inspirations, Aamir Khan.

  

• For his role of “Mohak” in the film ‘Raabta’ (2017), he went through a tiresome make-up process of applying prosthetics for 5-6 hours every day to look like a 324-year-old man.

• He wasn’t a voracious reader before, but after reading the biography of Robert De Niro, books have become an integral part of his life.

• He is an ardent devotee of Lord Ganesha.

  

• He is an avid dog lover.

  

• Rajkummar Rao was named the ‘National Icon’ by the Election Commission of India on 26 October 2023; the appointment was aimed at motivating voters to participate in elections actively.

• In April 2024, a picture of him went viral on the internet in which he was almost unrecognizable as his chin and jaw structure looked completely different; however, he denied the plastic surgery rumours and said that it was a morphed picture. He also said that a few years ago, he did a little touch-up on his chin with fillers.