Vicky Kaushal

Vicky Kaushal is a Hindi film actor and the son of the action director Sham Kaushal. He grew up in Mumbai, where he was born in a suburban chawl. He took a degree in electrical engineering at the Rajiv Gandhi Institute of Technology in 2009, then chose acting instead, starting as an assistant to Anurag Kashyap on Gangs of Wasseypur (2012).

His first lead was in the independent drama Masaan (2015), followed by Kashyap's Raman Raghav 2.0 (2016). Two 2018 hits, Raazi and Sanju, widened his audience, and Sanju won him the Filmfare Award for Best Supporting Actor. Uri: The Surgical Strike (2019), where he played an army officer, made him a leading man and won him the National Film Award for Best Actor. For Sardar Udham (2021), in which he played Udham Singh, he won the Filmfare Critics Award for Best Actor.

In 2023 he had Zara Hatke Zara Bachke, Sam Bahadur and Dunki, which won him a second Filmfare for Best Supporting Actor. His biggest hit so far is the historical action film Chhaava (2025), in which he plays Sambhaji. He has won a National Film Award and three Filmfare Awards.

Before films he trained at Kishore Namit Kapoor's acting school and did theatre with Manav Kaul's Aranya group and Naseeruddin Shah's Motley, working backstage and as a stand-in. His first stage role was in Laal Pencil in 2011. Masaan, directed by Neeraj Ghaywan, who had also assisted on Gangs of Wasseypur, cast him as a young man from Benaras. He spent time in the city to study how local men carried themselves. The film won two awards in Un Certain Regard at Cannes in 2015, including the FIPRESCI Prize, and his performance won him the IIFA and Screen awards for best male debut.