Vicky Kaushal is one of Bollywood’s rising stars, having emerged as a household name since the mid-2010s. If you wish to watch Kaushal’s versatile filmography, we’ve got you covered with a comprehensive watchlist of his movies so far. But before we get into the nitty gritty of the Masaan and Sanju actor’s film graph, let’s have a look at the streaming options.
Where to stream Vicky Kaushal’s filmography?
Most of Vicky Kaushal’s theatrical releases found their way onto Indian streaming platforms like ZEE5, Jio Cinema, and Eros Now. Additionally, he has also acted in the Netflix original movies Love Per Square Foot and Lust Stories. His period biopic Sardar Udham was meant for a theatrical release but owing to the pandemic, the movie was directly made available to stream on Amazon Prime Video.
Once you’ve got your Vicky Kaushal binge sorted out, here’s a glimpse at his career so far.
From Humble Beginnings to Cannes Breakout
While his father Sham Kaushal worked as an action director in Bollywood, Kaushal wasn’t exactly a nepo-kid in the industry. After years of odd jobs with theatre groups and acting auditions, Kaushal’s luck started turning in his favour when he got a chance to assist Anurag Kashyap on his two-part gangster epic Gangs of Wasseypur.
The assistant director stint helped in establishing a crucial bond with Kashyap who later cast him in small roles in his comedy production Luv Shuv Tey Chicken Khurana and his own gangster drama Bombay Velvet. However, it was in 2015’s Masaan that Kaushal got his first lead role. Starring alongside talented character actors like Richa Chaddha, Shweta Tripathi, and Pankaj Tripathi, Kaushal shone in the movie as a mild-mannered corpse cremator.
Launching the career of both Kaushal and his director Neeraj Ghawyan, the movie was lauded internationally, winning two awards at the 2015 edition of Cannes.
Balancing Commercial Hero Status and Supporting Roles
Since Masaan, Kaushal has gone on to hone his craft in both commercial and relatively niche projects. So, while he collaborated with Kashyap again to play a cocaine-sniffing corrupt cop in the neo-noir Raman Raghav 2.0, he also played a lovable IT engineer in the Netflix rom-com Love Per Square Foot.
But even while getting top billing in blockbusters like the military actioner Uri: The Surgical Strike and the biopic Sardar Udham (in which he played the anti-imperialist freedom fighter Udham Singh), Kaushal took on supporting parts with equal fervour. In fact, some of his best performances have come out of side roles.
Prominent examples include Sanju in which he played a controversial actor’s best friend, and Raazi that found him playing a Pakistani military official alongside Alia Bhatt’s Indian secret agent heroine. Sanju marked his first Filmfare win for Best Supporting Actor.
His friendships with Bollywood’s leading directors are evident in recurring collaborations. Apart from appearing in four Anurag Kashyap movies, he reunited with Sanju director Rajkumar Hirani for the immigrant comedy Dunki while also playing the titular military general in Raazi director Meghna Gulzar’s biographical drama Sam Bahadur.
Why is Masaan Vicky Kaushal’s best movie?
Ever since it premiered at Cannes, Masaan made it clear that it would go down as a cult classic for contemporary Bollywood audiences. But if you watch it over and over, it’s easy to see that Vicky Kaushal’s gut-wrenching performance is one of the reasons for its legacy. The film features a much-younger Kaushal giving his all as he plays a dreamy-eyed boy who wishes to free himself from the shackles of casteism that his family faces. A wholesome romance accompanied by a heartbreaking twist brings out such raw outbursts from Kaushal that it’s hard to not reach for the tissues when he sobs.
