Dulquer Salmaan: I was pushed around on Bollywood sets until I pretended to be a star
Dulquer Salmaan shares his experience of creating the illusion of being a star in the Hindi film industry. He highlighted cultural differences and perception challenges between film industries.
Dulquer Salmaan, who entered the Hindi film industry with ‘Caravan’ (2018), recently discussed the difficulties he faces in Bollywood. The 42-year-old actor recalled the time when he was forced to fabricate his own stardom to secure a chair on a production set.
Dulquer said in a recent interview hollywood reporter‘S Producers Roundtable 2025Said, “When I did Hindi films here, there used to be a scuffle between me and my two people on the set. I had to create the illusion of being such a big star. Otherwise, I wouldn’t get chairs to sit. I wouldn’t get a place to look at the monitor. It would be a huge crowd of people.”
He added, “I realized it’s all perception. If you get in a fancy car with a lot of people, suddenly the perception becomes, ‘Oh, this is a star.’ Which is sad because this is not where my energy should be spent.”
“I just couldn’t understand. I don’t want to be bad towards any industry, but I think it’s a cultural thing. I and Rana (Daggubati) were discussing that the size of the Hindi industry is so big – the number of theatres, the markets and so many states speaking the language and watching those films. We have just 1-2 states, and we think we’re a big deal. Maybe the size of the industry affects things,” the actor said.
Drawing comparisons between the Hindi film industry and the Malayalam film industry (Mollywood), Dulquer asserted: “We never had any luxuries on the sets. We would shoot across the state, take permission from a house, pay the owners and from there we would change or use the toilet. That was always the practice.”
The actor’s last Hindi theater release was Quiet: The Artist’s Revenge (2022). The film also starred Sunny Deol, Shreya Dhanwantri, Pooja Bhatt and others in lead roles.
Dulquer was recently seen in Kantha (2025). The film was released theatrically in Telugu and Tamil on November 14, 2025.
