Actor SahilAnand on life in Chandigarh, mental health & upcoming projects

Samridhi Singh

Student of the Year actor Sahil Anand gained fame due to his typical ‘Punjabi boy’ look, but he does not wish to be typecast. This is the reason why he has been experimenting with different characters, languages and accents. With web series such as Saiyan Magan Pehelwani Mein, Missing Chapter and the film Banned to his credit, he says, “Web has a vast audience. I am trying to play with its potential. Both my films, Misfit and Kaboom, are up for release in February this year.”

Calling Chandigarh home

“Mumbai isn’t the same as Chandigarh. There is a lot of traffic and even hills aren’t that close. Chandigarh is comparatively peaceful. Yes, I have to be very social in Mumbai but back home in Chandigarh I usually stay with my parents. But I do go out for gedis. They are in my blood! I feel like I was born on the gedi route. My house is on the same road as well. I often go to the Sukhna Lake. I love driving and the roads in tricity are amazing. “

Mental health

“Acting is very hard. There is more rejection than selection in our field. I am an engineer, so could have chosen another field. Numbers do affect me, but I try not to put myself in that headspace. When you see your hard work not paying off, it does hurt. My movies came and went, but no one saw them! I think PR plays a huge role in this. All these films that I have done have a fairly good rating, but aren’t very popular. Talking to people helped, I saw how much they loved and supported me. It gave me strength and I recovered fast. When you are putting every minute detail on social media, then mental health can also be talked about. But since my doctor asked me to take some time off social media, I had to disable my account. But everyone started asking, so I had to eventually come back and justify my absence.

On the wish-list

“I would love to work with directors like Anurag basu, Imtiaz Ali and Dibakar Banerjee. It was a dream to share the screen with late Irrfan Khan, but unfortunately that couldn’t happen. I enjoy comedy, but I don’t see a lot of humour on Netflix. To be honest, I am tired of Netflix giving us only thrillers. Apart from that, I wish to be more active on social media.”