Bobby Deol

Bobby Deol has had the rarest thing in this industry: a proper second act. Born Vijay Singh Deol in 1969, the younger son of Dharmendra and younger brother of Sunny, he first appeared on screen as a child in Dharam Veer in 1977, which is roughly as inside-the-family as a start gets.

His first lead came in Barsaat in 1995 and won him the Filmfare Award for Best Male Debut. What followed was a decade of the kind of hits that defined the era: Gupt in 1997, Soldier in 1998, then Badal, Bichhoo, Ajnabee and Humraaz. For a stretch he was one of the most bankable faces going.

Then the roles thinned and the industry moved on, which is usually where the story ends. Aashram is what changed it. Playing Baba Nirala reintroduced him to an audience that had never watched Barsaat, and it reset his image entirely, from nineties heartthrob to something far more unsettling and far more interesting.

Animal sealed it in 2023. His villain in the year’s biggest action film earned a Filmfare nomination for Best Supporting Actor and made him, at 54, one of the most talked-about men in Hindi cinema. The cameras have not lost interest since, and everything below is from our lens.

More on Bobby Deol: en.wikipedia.org