Sneha Mahadevan (DNA; June 17, 2015)

Akshay Kumar is playing a Catholic character — David Fernandes — for the first time in his career in Karan Malhotra’s Brothers. The actor lost 17 kilos to look the part and his character sports many tattoos. The crew drew inspiration from locals all over Bandra for the same.

Malhotra reveals, “It isn’t something that we made out of thin air. Since he is playing a Catholic in the film, my crew went into small Bandra bylanes and met people. They clicked pictures of their tattoos. We have taken inspiration from the locals — how they dress, how they talk, the kind of tattoos they have, etc. In the film, Akshay has a Jesus tattoo on his arm and a cross on his wrist. A lot of other things in his tattoo designs are for impact.”

Akshay plays a physics teacher with a hidden past. “As a physics teacher, he looks like an ordinary man. But when he takes his shirt off, his tattoos depict a story of a violent, turbulent and traumatic past,” Karan adds.
Though Akshay has a few personal tattoos, he never interfered while the crew were choosing the designs. His personal tattoos (the names of his two kids and wife Twinkle) were covered up as they do not go with his character.