By Soudip Chatterjee

Soudip Chatterjee

Veteran legendary script writer Salim Khan has recently told the same in a very candid interview where he praised Akshay Kumar with his usual demeanour. Not only Salim Khan but the whole industry is solely piggybacked by the might of Akshay Kumar in recent few years.

Now coming to 2017, when most of the big stars of tinsel town has failed to deliver big hits, Akshay Kumar is proudly hoisting his reign vanquishing others with his super hit ventures named, ‘State Vs Jolly LLB ’ and ‘Toliet Ek Prem Katha’ and he is continuing this roll for quite some years. When others find tough to release 1-2 films in a year, Akshay manages to come up with 2-3 or more than that in almost every year. From trade to public everyone is forced to knuckle down to accept his supremacy over other actors. The producers are laughing, distributors are in profit zone and exhibitors are experiencing serpentine line in front of their theatres- these are happening only because of Akshay Kumar. The question arises, how from a struggling 2^nd fiddle actor Akshay actually became a superstar? How did a man with most number of disasters become the most trustworthy star?

Akshay started his career in the same era of Bollywood’s three big Khans but unlike them his initial journey and road to success were full of thorns and spikes. He saw his debut as a lead actor in ‘Saugandh’ but the period has not been very fruitful for him. He has seen massive ups and downs on those years but what worked for him is his tenacity and will power to remain in the business. He continues chasing his dream and proves to be a real player of the game. He was treated badly by producers in the sets but his mental strength never stopped him from doing the films and later he proved himself as the true Khiladi of the industry. He went on do films after films and today he has more than 120 films under his wings.

At the early years of his tenure Akshay was termed as a Casanova of the industry thanks to his relations with Raveena Tandon and Shilpa Shetty but with each passing year he changed himself. He changed his lifestyle, off-screen appearance and made himself a responsible person. Now he is the face of patriotic films in India. After Manoj Kumar and Sunny Deol, he took the onus and instilled the belief in the mind of public of India that he is a true son of India and wants to serve for the country. His hard-hitting real life based story upped the ante for him too. Now when a producer is thinking to make film on real life incident the first man comes on his/her mind is Akshay.

To play big innings, one must maintain a proper set of rules and regulations. Akshay never breaks any and follow the strict ones. He wakes up at 4 am daily and works up to 10 pm everyday except Sunday when he gives his full day to his family. Akshay is neither a boozer nor a smoker so his fitness always remained top-notch and he looks younger than most of his contemporaries. Like few others Akshay doesn’t need any dose of botox or detoxification procedure to look energetic, it’s his daily fitness regime that is providing him the extra mileage. He doesn’t come to attend any party which is often discussed among the other who counts those as ways of making contacts. Surely, Akshay has his own way of tackling everything.

The most important aspect of an actor is to make a connection with audiences. In his first few years Akshay was touted as a good stuntman who is a master in martial arts and people applauded him for those action based films like ‘Khiladi series’, ‘Mohra’, ‘Waqt Hamara Hai’,’Aflatoon’ etc but then he turned to comedy and he owned the genre and how. The combination of Priyadarshan and Akshay Kumar has given us numerous hits like ‘Hera Pheri’, ‘Garam Masala’, ‘Bhagam Bhag’, ‘Khatta Meetha’ etc. His way of presenting humour made him the king of comedy.

But he faced flak often and was criticized for his inconsistency at the box office. More than that, he never became an option for higher class audience. He immediately understood that his films mainly catered to single screen audiences and in modern era without the support of multiplex none could score big so he teamed up with Neeraj Pandey and steered his career into a different zone. Now, he maintains a perfect balance between single screens and multiplex with his variety of his films and established himself as the most trusted actor of present times.

The face value of Akshay Kumar is not same as the Khans as these 3 Khans always register an astonishing amount of footfalls which in worst cases are higher than other others. They can give 300 crores(Aamir and Salman) on a regular basis now which is almost double of Akshay’s highest gossing film ever ‘Rowdy Rathore’ but with law of average Akshay each year beats them quite easily. He makes 3 films every year and if each of his 3 films gross 130 crore on an average the cumulative total of his films in a year will be 390 crore or 400 crore which is havoc and definitely not a cake of walk. That’s how Akshay is eliminating his contemporaries like a champion.

The work procedure of Akshay Kumar is contradictory to Aamir Khan’s. Akshay believes to do as much film as he can with perfection where as Aamir’s philosophy relies on the overall scrutiny and perfect execution. Over the years, these 2 philosophies have dominated but Akshay is the safest to pursue. Aamir Khan offers a film of supreme quality but hardly feeds starving or losing distributors and exhibitors. He always hikes the ticket prices to ensure a big total but Akshay being the man of the season; a one man industry comes every year with a flock of films to resurrect the dying exhibitors and distributors. He now holds a position where he can give good actor run for their money. He has gained a massive fan following for the same too. He just completed his 50^th birthday on 9^th September but he is not showing any way of slowing down. He is just a piper of Hamelin who mesmerizes people with his films and pulls them out to watch it in theatre.

‘He is neither Amitabh nor Dilip Kumar not even kids of stars, he is honest and truthful Akshay’