Adarsh Gourav of ‘The White Tiger’ Fame Among Variety’s ‘International Breakout Stars of 2021’
- The 27-year-old is joined by Bangladeshi model and television actor Azmeri Haque Badhon.
Indian actor Adarsh Gourav of “The White Tiger” fame is among Variety’s ‘International Breakout Stars of 2021,’ a list of “a handful of hatchlings who few honestly saw coming, but who we trust will continue grabbing headlines for years to come.”
Gourav made his Bollywood debut in 2010 as the young Shah Rukh Khan in Karan Johar’s “My Name is Khan. He got noticed in Anurag Kashyap’s 2016 short “Clean Shaven,” and then in “Mom” and later in Deepa Mehta’s 2019 Netflix series “Leila.”
But it was Ramin Bahrani’s adaptation of Arvind Adiga’s Booker-winning novel “The White Tiger” that catapulted the 27-year-old to international fame. Also starring Priyanka Chopra and Rajkumar Rao, “The White Tiger” is a social satire that explores themes like poverty, corruption, survival and class struggle in India. It takes us on the journey of Balram Halwai’s (Gourav) rise from a poor villager to a successful entrepreneur, through his highly ambitious plans. His central performance as a scheming, social-climbing driver earned him BAFTA, AACTA and Independent Film Awards nominations.
An alumnus of The Drama School, Mumbai, Gourav is trained in Hindustani classical music for over nine years. During his school and college days, he was a frontman for metal and rock band Steepsky and Oak Island. His Oak Island featured on the show “MTV Indies – Never Hide Sounds,” for its EP titled “Aliens Can’t Jump.” Gourav has also done playback singing for music veterans like Illayaraja (“Chal Chalein”) and “Sukhwinder Singh (Black and White”). Gourav has been doing TV commercials since his teenage years.
Some of his upcoming projects include Farhan and Zoya Akhtar’s “Ho Gaye Hum Kahan” and Scott Z. Burns’ anthology “Extrapolations.”
Joining Gourav is a Bangladeshi model and television actor Azmeri Haque Badhon who broke through internationally this year with her first major role in a feature film, “Rehana Maryam Noor,” the first Bangladeshi film to be selected in the official competition at Cannes.
Formally trained in dental surgery, and a single mother who lives in Dhaka with her 10-year-old daughter, Badhon plays a single mother who teaches in a medical college, who speaks out against sexual assault and, in doing so, challenges a wall of authority. She went on to win the best actress prize at the Asia Pacific Screen Awards.
She is now playing one of the leads in Netflix’s spy thriller “Khufiya,” by Vishal Bhardwaj.