Why directors and audiences meet in Vicky Kaushal’s filmography

Hindi cinema has conditioned audiences to look for proof of success almost immediately—opening-day numbers, box-office totals, viral clips. What it has grown less patient with is credibility that takes time.

In this loud landscape, Vicky Kaushal has thrived by doing the opposite: he insists on being believable even when the culture rewards volume.  Kaushal is not an actor audiences escape into. He disappears into character, letting his craft do the heavy lifting. Then it’s over.  

His performance is a deliberate calibration of bone and muscle. In Masaan(2015), Kaushal moves with the loose-limbed, hesitant gait of a boy still figuring out the weight of his own skin. In contrast, in the biographical Sam Bahadur (2023), the frame is replaced by the rigid, clipped march of a Field Marshal where every movement is disciplined and deliberate.  

“My job as an actor between ‘action’ and ‘cut’ is always going to be the same,” says Kaushal. From the beginning, the characters he has played have felt familiar. He excels in the "silent" moment, those beats between the dialogue where his face does the most difficult part of the job. “Silence is where a character really comes alive,” he notes. 

It’s a performance that doesn’t beg for attention with loud gestures; instead, it settles into the frame, compelling the audience to lean closely in rather than look away. 

Vicky Kaushal and the shifting economics of Hindi cinema 

Kaushal emerged in the unique mid-decade sweet spot where Hindi cinema briefly embraced diverse performance styles. In 2015, his debut act in Masaan shared space with films like Piku, NH10, and Bajrangi Bhaijaan. It was a time when vulnerability and moral conflict could coexist with large-scale heroism. That window has since narrowed. As mainstream Hindi cinema returns to scale, quieter, character-driven work has largely migrated to streaming platforms. The shift isn’t about craft; it’s how commercial risk is now tightly managed.

Kaushal’s career has continued across genres and scales within this environment. From Uri: The Surgical Strike (2019) to Sam Bahadur, Zara Hatke Zara Bachke(2023), and Chhaava(2025), he adjusts his role to the story, not the commercial trend surrounding it. “My job is to make people believe that I am the guy they’re seeing in that story,” he says. “That core part of being an actor is not going to change, irrespective of trends.”

In 2025, Chhaava became Kaushal’s biggest theatrical opening to date, placing him in his loudest, most aggressive role yet. The film grossed ₹33.10 crore on its first day in India, led by strong numbers from Maharashtra. Some critics noted its tilt towards heightened violence and scale.

Commercially, the role held. It demonstrated that Kaushal’s presence could carry a spectacle-driven film. While Raazi (2018), Sam Bahadur, and Sardar Udham(2021) relied on restraint and accumulation, Chhaava asked the same acting method to operate at a far higher volume. This shift tested how far scale could expand without breaking credibility.

How the characters Vicky Kaushal plays earn audience trust 

Whether a role demands restraint or rebellion, Kaushal’s performances build audience trust. The loyalty forms gradually, through continuity rather than noise.

But loyalty also sets its terms. When an actor’s appeal rests on certain roles, shifts in scale or tone are read closely. Expansion has to feel earned. Volume cannot override believability.

 “I never think about how the audience should grow with me,” adds Kaushal. “If I’m just growing, and that growth is visible and real—not like a costume I’m wearing—then the audience grows with me naturally.”

In a modern "two-screen reality," films are no longer watched in isolation. Audiences are distracted, cross-checking facts, and clipping scenes for social media as they watch. Patience is no longer a given; attention must be earned repeatedly within the same film.  

Kaushal’s response to this fragmentation is consistency. By choosing roles that offer unfamiliar ground, he has built a rare commodity: audience trust. Whether he is playing a soldier or a historical king, he ensures the expansion of his stardom feels earned rather than forced.  

“What excites me as an actor is that I keep breaking stereotypes,” he says. “People start to believe they can connect with me in a particular zone, and then I want to explore another one and see if that resonates as well.”

His upcoming challenge involves stepping into the cinema of amplification. InLove & War, slated for release in 2026, Kaushal enters the world of Sanjay Leela Bhansali, where emotion and gesture are sustained at a grand scale. Here, performance must live in conversation with spectacle.  

“I have to give in to the vision of the director and the grammar with which they want to tell the story,” says Kaushal. His comfort with that clarity is shaped by his early years working as an assistant director, when he learned to observe filmmaking from the inside. He responds to directors who arrive on set with a clear sense of the edit already in place, where decisions about performance, camera, and rhythm are resolved before the shot is taken.

Why the narrative arc matters for Vicky Kaushal 

Kaushal’s choices are filtered through a basic test, one he applies as an audience member as much as an actor. Does the role open unfamiliar ground for him? Does the story justify the time and money it asks of a theatre audience? “These are the basic boxes I’m ticking all the time,” he says.

There is no fixed formula in cinema, a reality that extends even to the hyper-masculine characters gaining more visibility today. What works, Kaushal argues, is never the archetype alone. “It always depends on how the story is told and how it’s executed,” he says. “No matter how good the actor is, if the story doesn’t resonate and if the execution doesn’t land, the character won’t either. The audience is not going to take that character back home with them.” 

Violence, too, only carries weight when it belongs organically to a film’s emotional logic. When performed for effect, it collapses into gimmickry. 

Kaushal’s method of building a believable life, understanding a character's mind rather than just wearing a costume, is what actually holds a distracted viewer’s gaze. He knows that if the emotional core isn't strong, even the most expensive VFX packaging will lose its grip on the audience after the first 20 minutes. 

“Visuals and scale always make it easier,” he notes. But that ease is conditional. Scale requires its own discipline—more budgets, more labour, and a level of control that allows excess to feel intentional rather than ornamental.

That belief is not new, he points out. Hindi cinema has seen it before. Archetypes surface easily but very few endure. Referring to the hyper-masuline trope, he adds, “The character works because the story works, the execution works.” 

Ultimately, Kaushal’s work isn't about fitting into an archetype, it’s about building a human being. “You have to build that world in your head,” he says. Over time, that method has shaped the audience that returns to his work. He does not frame it as anything more than doing the job.

Whether that approach can hold unchanged as scale increases and attention fragments is a question the industry answers around him. In a cinema trained for instant reactions, Kaushal remains an actor who plays the long game.