Sidharth Malhotra's attempt at breaking his boy next door image and how far he's succeeded at it

Sidharth Malhotra set a new milestone in his career playing Captain Vikram Batra in the digitally released Shershaah last year. Evidently the actor put in a lot of heart and soul into playing the character and the overwhelming response which the film received has only raised expectation from the actor who turns 37 today.

He may have arrived and captured hearts as the shy and grounded Abhimanyu Singh in Karan Johar ’s Student Of The Year but the actor wasn’t quite able to shed his chocolate boy image after the film. With the actor ruling hearts of the ladies with good looks and his great chemistry with the leading ladies in films, the actor could have quite easily aimed at being the next big romantic hero in Bollywood and succeeded at it.

However, Sidharth doesn’t aim at making love stories his comfort zone and it shows in his filmography. In fact, he has been desperately trying to break the image of being Bollywood’s box next door and foray into tougher terrains with action flicks and thrillers. While Shershaah remains his biggest achievement in that zone, Sidharth has done several films in the past to establish himself in the zone.

Action is a zone dominated in Bollywood by stars like Akshay Kumar , Ajay Devgn , Tiger Shroff, John Abraham, Hrithik Roshan , Salman Khan and is rather hard to break into. However, Sidharth’s efforts have been relentless.

Sidharth turned action hero for the first time in Ek Villain playing Guru Divekar, a former hitman trying to build an honest life. The actor followed up this grey character by jumping into the boxing arena with Akshay Kumar in Brothers which failed to create an impact. Aiyaari had him playing a military man for the first time but the film failed at the box office as did his other films like A Gentleman and Marjaavaan .

The actor has delivered more memorable performances with films like Kapoor and Sons, Hasee Toh Phasee and Student of The Year which is something that the actor could have used to his advantage but looks like his heart is set elsewhere.

While these back to back failures didn’t quite dry up offers coming Sidharth’s way, the actor did manage to win audiences back with Shershaah proving that Bollywood has barely scratched the surface of his talent.

With Shershaah finally bringing the actor’s mojo back, the future holds two more action entertainers for the actor. One is Mission Majnu a spy thriller where the actor plays a RAW agent in the 1970’s while another is Yodha which is touted to be an aerial action thriller. How much will these films benefit from Sidharth’s success in Shershaah is something only time will tell. Apart from these he has a comedy film Thank God featuring Ajay Devgn and Rakul Preet Singh .