Living the Dream

‘Nobody here wants to just make money…we all want to be famous!’The joke around town amongst actors is that Lokhandwala, in Bombay’s suburbs, may be the only place where you will actually have to give an audition to rent an apartment! Aspiring actors from all over India who move here share one thing in common: a Dream — of fame, fortune and eternal glory.Living the Dream: The Life of the ‘Bollywood’ Actor is a visual story of those who try to make it in the world’s largest film industry. Present here are newcomers waiting for the big break — Gabbar Singh, Geetika Tyagi, Varun Thakur and Kanan Chakor — juxtaposed with megastars like Salman Khan, Ranveer Singh, Alia Bhatt and Ranbir Kapoor. In all, more than a hundred photographs and interviews of people from every branch of Bollywood speaking frankly, often heart-wrenchingly, of a struggle where one’s pride and ego are on the line every day. As Karan Johar puts it in the Foreword, ‘What this book captures is something we have never seen before — it is what life really looks like for an actor in Bombay.’So what is Fame? For most actors, fame is unconditional love. The greater the success, the greater the love. Dharmendra once met a fan at a New York airport who, with tears in his eyes, could only utter, ‘Dharmendra…’ The megastar embraced the man and thought to himself, ‘He knows me only through the screen…so, what is this relation? You can’t give any name to this relation other than LOVE.’