How a character’s success can limit the actor from experimenting on screen

Shiv Sagar, grandson of filmmaker Ramanand Sagar, was recently quoted as saying that he found it difficult to accept Ranbir Kapoor as Ram in the upcoming film Ramayana, after watching him as Ranvijay Singh in the 2023 superhit, Animal, a revenge saga. An actor’s job is to inhabit a character convincingly. The curious paradox of stardom is that the better an actor succeeds, the harder it can become for audiences to imagine them as anybody else.