After my first three films flopped, people called me box-office poison

Picture Courtesy: Official Instagram Account/Tanuj Virwani

The Hindi film industry now is being looked at with a much larger critical lens than it was before. After the unfortunate demise of Sushant Singh Rajput, a lot of actors and filmmakers have shared their bitter experiences in Bollywood and how they lost out good and promising projects due to nepotism.

And in an interview with Hindustan Times now, Rati Agnihotri's son and actor Tarun Virwani has shed some light on his personal experience in the industry and how he finally found success after three consecutive flops. These films were Luv U Soniyo (2013), Purani Jeans (2014) and One Night Stand (2016).

He said, "There was a time after I did three films when people were like, 'Oh, you are unemployable. You are box office poison. No one is ever going to sign you again.' Boom, I end up being a part of Inside Edge and the same people come and say, 'Oh my God, you are such an amazing actor.'"

He also spoke about how belonging to a film family didn't really fetch him projects and how he had to make his own name and all by himself. He stated, "My mother goes by her maiden surname (Agnihotri) and I go by Virwani, which is my father's surname. A lot of the time, people take a while to even make the connection. Many don't even know I am her son. I have had my fair share of struggles also."

He continued, "I didn't have the best of starts in the business. I did three films, none of them worked. My mother had absolutely nothing to do with them. They were relatively small films and I got them on my own." He then had something to say about the issue of Nepotism too.

He said, "I know for a fact that nepotism does exist in our industry, favouritism does exist, camps exist, cliques exist. Sometimes you give an audition and you feel that this is going to work out but the next thing you know, you are nowhere in the running just because someone has an equation with someone. It happens. It is the nature of the business, there are no two ways about that."

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