With a ₹200-crore film and his first National Award, Vicky Kaushal calls 2019 a year of ‘gratitude’
Titas Chowdhury (HINDUSTAN TIMES; December 22, 2019)

The year 2019 has been nothing short of a dream for Vicky Kaushal. He started the year with a bang with Uri: The Surgical Strike that turned out to be a ₹200 crore grossing film. And while he got busy shooting for his next projects, in August it was announced that he won his first ever National Award for his portrayal of an army man in the film.

“This has been a year like no other. It has been so beautiful. The response that Uri received was incredible. More than the box office figures, it’s about the love that I got from the audience, the way the film resonated with them and how they made it their own. That’s a wonderful feeling for the actor in me,” he says.

The actor is particularly happy with the response that the whole team got for the film. “That was special. And then winning the National Award was a beautiful surprise for me, my family and the team. Every actor hopes to get a National Award, but for it to come to me so early on in my career is a true blessing,” says Vicky.

What has made 2019 even more special for him is the fact that he has signed a slew of big banner films. “I’ve already finished shooting for a major chunk of Shoojit Sircar’s Sardar Udham Singh. I had signed Takht and Meghna Gulzar’s film on Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw and we start shooting next year. It has been a year of gratitude and I’m humbled,” says the 31-year-old.

Having been a part of films such as Raazi, Manmarziyaan, Sanju (all in 2018), Vicky is happy that the image of the Hindi film hero has drastically changed over the years. “Ten or eleven years back, when I was in college, I decided that I don’t want to be an engineer. I thought I didn’t have the face of a hero. Back then, there were no actors. We only had heroes. The general notion was that only those with a chocolate boy image could become a hero. And I used to be a lanky boy,” he reveals.

Vicky says that it’s a good time to be an artiste. “The times have thankfully changed. There’s no definition of a hero anymore. It’s more to do with talent. There’s a surge in terms of scripts being written and the actors who are coming on board. Now there’s no such thing as a face of a hero. Films, today, can make an actor a hero. It’s important for a film to be a hero.”