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Rajat Bedi says that his life in Canada wasn’t easy and he went through a lot of pain. He adds seeing his friends turning billionaires while his career was headed nowhere.
Rajat Bedi is riding high on the success of The Ba***ds Of Bollywood that saw him playing a forgotten actor.
Rajat Bedi started his career with Ramesh Sippy. He served as an assistant director to him on Shah Rukh Khan’s Zamaana Deewana. Later, he delivered hits with Jaani Dushman: Ek Anokhi Kahani, Koi Mil Gaya and Partner, but his career trajectory hasn’t really been a cakewalk. His hits failed to translate to bigger offers and lack of work and financial instability led him to move to Canada and foray into real estate development. But recently, he made a smashing comeback with The Ba***ds Of Bollywood.
Speaking exclusively to News18 Showsha, Rajat reveals that a lull in his career took a toll on him, leading him to have an emotional breakdown. “I’ve done some 40-50 films and despite that, I wasn’t getting work. That’s why I left the country. I broke down in 2005. I couldn’t see myself growing,” he tells us. It was television mogul Ektaa R Kapoor who came to his rescue but Rajat decided to not venture into the small screen industry, worried that it would put a final end to his Bollywood career.
“At that time, I was getting offers from the television industry. Balaji Telefilms offered me a show for them. But I didn’t want to do television. I was very confused. I thought that if I do it and if that also doesn’t work, it would mean that my career as an actor is completely done. I had a mindset that if that happens, nobody would ever offer me a film after that,” he recounts.
What also weighed him down was witnessing his close friends and confidants achieving success while he was seeing his career go belly up. “I went through a lot of pain. I would see friends around me, who were super successful. My best friends are all billionaires. I would look at them and tell myself, ‘Rajat, when will you grow?’ I was getting name and fame but I couldn’t use them to buy and eat food. I needed to look out for myself financially. I had a family to support,” he says.
Life, however, didn’t completely change for the better even when he shifted base to Vancouver. “Once I moved to Canada and got into real estate development, that also wasn’t doing well. I struggled in Canada too. It was a good but also a very bad journey that I had there,” Rajat states. Though he did films like The Hero: Love Story of A Spy and International Khiladi while in Canada, he admits that Bollywood is a rather ‘hard industry’ to navigate and survive in.
“Acting is one of the toughest careers. It can literally kill you. You’ve to stay mentally and physically strong and stay relevant. A lot of people give up. It’s very challenging. It’s important to do something else also so that you aren’t just dependent on acting. Plus, you need something else to support your passion. You’ve to look after your family too, financially. You’ve to see to it that you’re giving them a good lifestyle,” Rajat tells us.
Titas Chowdhury is a Principal Correspondent at News18 Showsha. She writes about cinema, music and gender in cinema. Interviewing actors and filmmakers, writing about latest trends in showbiz and bringing break…Read More
Titas Chowdhury is a Principal Correspondent at News18 Showsha. She writes about cinema, music and gender in cinema. Interviewing actors and filmmakers, writing about latest trends in showbiz and bringing break… Read More
October 20, 2025, 08:50 IST
