Nawazuddin Siddiqui and the Slow Road to Stardom

Few leading actors in Hindi cinema took as long to get noticed as Nawazuddin Siddiqui. His Wikipedia biography is a timeline of small parts, empty years and, finally, a run of acclaimed roles. This piece follows it and leaves aside the sections on his private life.

A chemist from Budhana

According to the biography, Siddiqui was born on 19 May 1974 in Budhana, a small town in Muzaffarnagar district, Uttar Pradesh, into a zamindari Muslim family, and is the eldest of eight siblings. He spent most of his youth in Uttarakhand and graduated with a Bachelor of Science in chemistry from Gurukul Kangri University in Haridwar. He worked as a chemist in Vadodara for a year, then left for Delhi in search of a new job. There he was drawn to acting after watching a play. To meet one of the criteria for admission to the National School of Drama, he acted in over ten plays with a group of friends.

Minor roles and lean years

After graduating from the National School of Drama in 1999, he moved to Mumbai. He made his Bollywood debut with a small role in Sarfarosh (1999), then appeared in Shool (1999), Jungle (2000) and Munna Bhai M.B.B.S. (2003). He tried television without much success and appeared in the short film The Bypass (2003) with Irrfan Khan. From 2002 to 2005 he was largely out of work, lived in a flat with four others and survived by conducting occasional acting workshops. In 2004, one of the worst years of his struggle, he could not pay rent. A National School of Drama senior let him share an apartment in Goregaon if he would cook meals for him.

Between 2004 and 2007 he had minor roles, including in Black Friday, released in 2007 and nominated for the Golden Leopard. He had a cameo in Dev D (2009), and it was a journalist role in Peepli Live (2010) that first brought him wide recognition. Patang: The Kite (2012) premiered at the Berlin and Tribeca festivals, and Roger Ebert said the role "transformed his acting style".

Breakthrough

In 2012 he played a short-tempered intelligence officer in Kahaani, followed by Gangs of Wasseypur and its sequel. His first leading role came as Sonu Duggal in Miss Lovely, which premiered at Cannes in 2012, a part he calls his "most real performance so far". The Lunchbox (2013) premiered in Critics' Week at Cannes and won him the Filmfare Award for Best Supporting Actor, and he also received a Special Jury Award at the 2012 National Film Awards. In 2014 he was the lead antagonist in the blockbuster Kick, and in 2015 he appeared in Bajrangi Bhaijaan and Manjhi: The Mountain Man.

Later awards

His work in Raman Raghav 2.0 (2016) won Best Actor at Fancine Malaga in Spain and at the Asia Pacific Screen Awards, and Manto (2018) won him Best Actor at the 2018 Asia Pacific Screen Awards. He starred with Saif Ali Khan in Sacred Games, Netflix's first original Indian series, and in the British series McMafia, both of which were nominated for an International Emmy. His later work includes Thamma (2025) and, in 2026, Main Actor Nahin Hoon.

Where he lives

The biography says he lives in Mumbai with his younger brother, the director Shamas Nawab, and owns a farm in Budhana, where he said in a May 2021 interview that he spends most of his time.

A note on sources

Details of the struggle years come from his own accounts as relayed in the biography, such as the flat-sharing and the cooking arrangement. The film credits and awards are the checkable parts.

Sources

*Cover photo: Laura Lee Dooley, Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0).*