Remember Anshuman from the film Jab We Met (JWM; 2007)? Well, actor Tarun Arora is pleased that he is still recognised for his role in the iconic film. He is also happy to have got a lot of recognition for the performance but the appreciation didn’t result in better roles. In fact, he got similar roles which was a downer.

“I was offered roles with lesser screen space which was not acceptable to me. I could see my career wouldn’t pick up if I walked down that route. I had hit the benchmark with JWM. Sadly, no one could see me in other kinds of roles,” says the model-turned-actor.

Back then he left Mumbai and moved to Bengaluru where he had a restaurant and focused on it. He waited for the kind of roles he wanted to do and it paid off. “It is tough to wait for quality work to come our way. I diverted my mind with other things. I wasn’t young and didn’t have a film background or anyone to help me out. I had spent my youth modelling and had done hotel management. So starting my restaurant in Bengaluru made sense. Later, I began doing theatre alongside, too. I was confident as JWM had proved that I was on the right track. I got a number of interesting roles in Telugu and Tamil films that I began enjoying. The roles, the passion, the work experience — I didn’t miss anything. Work over there was a different journey but a fulfilling one,” he says.

Arora is glad to be back to Hindi films with the Akshay Kumar-starrer Laxmii. “I have worked with director Raghava Lawrence in his Tamil films and he felt I suited the role, so I grabbed the opportunity to do a good Hindi film and work with him again. I was happy that the role was unlike Anshuman, as for the Bollywood fraternity, I wanted to be seen in roles other than that,” he shares.