Rajkummar Rao and the Body of the Role

Rajkummar Rao is known for changing himself physically to fit a part, whether through weight, hair, accent or a month in a small town. His Wikipedia biography records several of these preparations. This piece follows them, and the careers they belong to, and does not offer them as a model for anyone's health.

Gurgaon, Delhi and FTII

According to the biography, Rao was born Raj Kumar Yadav on 31 August 1984 in Prem Nagar, Gurgaon, Haryana. His father worked in the Haryana revenue department and his mother was a homemaker. He took part in school plays, and graduated from Atma Ram Sanatan Dharma College, University of Delhi, doing theatre with the Kshitij Theatre Group and the Shri Ram Centre. He says he decided to become an actor after seeing Manoj Bajpayee. In 2008 he graduated from the Film and Television Institute of India in Pune and moved to Mumbai.

Early parts

After a year of visiting studios and casting directors, he made an uncredited appearance as a news reader in Rann (2010). He answered a newspaper advertisement from Dibakar Banerjee and was cast in Love Sex Aur Dhokha (2010), playing a supermarket supervisor. He had supporting roles in Gangs of Wasseypur Part 2 and Talaash (2012).

Transformations

For Shahid (2013), in which he played the late lawyer Shahid Azmi, he met Azmi's family, studied the Quran and attended court proceedings. He won the National Film Award for Best Actor. For CityLights (2014) he lived for a month in the town of Sadri in Rajasthan's Pali district, grew a moustache and learned the dialect.

For Trapped (2016), about a man stuck without food, water or electricity in an apartment, he lost weight and, to maintain it, stayed on a carrot and coffee diet throughout filming, according to the biography. Although he is a vegan, he ate meat in some scenes for the first time in his life because the director insisted on realism. For the web mini-series Bose: Dead/Alive, playing Subhash Chandra Bose, he gained 13 kilograms and went half bald. For Newton (2017), he asked the director if he could curl his hair and blink frequently to make the character distinct. For Omerta, playing Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, he watched videos, documentaries and speeches by Sheikh, and said he was "disturbed" while shooting.

Hits and misses

His breakthrough year was 2013 with Kai Po Che! and Shahid. He followed with Queen (2014), Aligarh (2015) and Bareilly Ki Barfi (2017), the last winning him the Filmfare Award for Best Supporting Actor. Newton premiered at the 67th Berlin International Film Festival and brought him the Asia Pacific Screen Award for Best Actor. Stree (2018) was his commercial breakthrough, and Badhaai Do (2022) won him the Filmfare Award for Best Actor. Fanney Khan (2018) was a critical and commercial failure, and Roohi, Badhaai Do and HIT: The First Case were commercial failures too. Stree 2 became the highest-grossing Hindi film of 2024, with a worldwide gross of over Rs 875 crore, according to the biography, and he said its success gave his confidence a "much-needed" lift after a series of commercial failures. He made his Hollywood debut in The White Tiger (2021).

Public image

Forbes India featured him on its 30 Under 30 list in 2014, and PETA listed him as India's Hottest Vegetarian Celebrity in 2017. He has been brand ambassador for the FSSAI's eat right movement.

A note on sources

The diet and weight details are as the biography reports them, and are not medical advice. The biography also mentions public controversy over a 2025 music video and his response; this article does not take a view.

Sources

*Cover photo: Maximilian Bühn, Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).*