No Faking It! Stars Who Learned Incredible Real-Life Skills For Their Films
From Kartik Aaryan learning three sports to Vidya Balan taking harmonium lessons, these Indian actors went back to basics for demanding movie roles.
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Looking the part is one thing. Knowing what to do when the camera moves in on your hands, feet or bowling arm is quite another. A convincing performance can demand months of lessons, endless repetition and the humility to become a beginner in front of an expert. Sometimes that means learning three sports for one film; sometimes it means practising an instrument for a handful of scenes. From cricket nets and wrestling mats to a harmonium and a helicopter cockpit, these Indian actors took on an extra syllabus for their roles – and some of their preparation stories deserve a film of their own.
Rashmika Mandanna’s reported Carnatic training for the upcoming M.S. Subbulakshmi biopic is the latest example. Here is a look at her ongoing preparation and the actors who have already put newly acquired skills to work on screen.
1. Rashmika Mandanna - Carnatic Singing For ‘MS - A Legacy On Screen’
Director: Gowtam Tinnanuri | Release: Expected after August 2027, exact date TBA
Playing M.S. Subbulakshmi means taking on a legacy that audiences recognise by its sound as much as its image. Rashmika has been announced as the lead of ‘MS - A Legacy On Screen’, with Anirudh Ravichander composing its music. The biopic will explore the life and career of the celebrated Carnatic vocalist. A full supporting cast has not yet been confirmed yet.
According to reports, Rashmika is undergoing intensive Carnatic vocal training. Reports said that the makers had considered using Subbulakshmi’s original recordings for lip-syncing before deciding that Rashmika would perform the vocals herself. The vocal preparation makes this one of her most demanding assignments yet: the resemblance will have to reach well beyond the costumes.
2. Janhvi Kapoor - Helicopter Familiarisation For ‘Gunjan Saxena: The Kargil Girl’
Director: Sharan Sharma | Released: August 12, 2020, on Netflix
Janhvi’s preparation for playing an Air Force pilot went considerably beyond putting on the uniform. Alongside Pankaj Tripathi and Angad Bedi, she portrayed Gunjan Saxena in a biographical drama about a young woman determined to fly despite the barriers around her. Janhvi told Mint that she completed daily military-style drills for 45 days, including obstacle courses, marching, salutes and weapons-handling practice, alongside weight training.
Gunjan Saxena also familiarised her with the helicopter’s interiors, controls and technical details, while aerial filming in Georgia gave her practical experience inside the aircraft. Janhvi separately said she got to fly a chopper with a pilot accompanying her. Her preparation was built around understanding what her character would actually see, feel and do in a cockpit.
3. Vidya Balan - Harmonium Lessons For ‘NTR: Kathanayakudu’
Director: Krish Jagarlamudi | Released: January 9, 2019 | Worldwide gross: Rs 31.50 crore
Not every new skill requires a year-long transformation. Sometimes the challenge is making a small moment look completely natural. For the NTR biopic, Vidya played Basavatarakam, the wife of actor-turned-politician N.T. Rama Rao, portrayed by Nandamuri Balakrishna. Rana Daggubati and Sumanth were also part of the film’s cast.
Composer Nitin Shankar told Mumbai Mirror that Vidya took four harmonium sessions in July 2018 because her character played the instrument in two songs. By the final session, he said, she was playing in scale. He also recalled her interest in continuing lessons and buying a harmonium after the shoot.
4. Kartik Aaryan - Swimming, Boxing And Wrestling For ‘Chandu Champion’
Director: Kabir Khan | Released: June 14, 2024 | Worldwide gross: Rs 89.24 crore
One demanding sport would have been enough homework. ‘Chandu Champion’ handed Kartik three. Playing Murlikant Petkar, India’s first Paralympic gold medallist, meant following a life that moved through wrestling, boxing and swimming, with Vijay Raaz, Bhuvan Arora and Rajpal Yadav joining the cast.
Kabir Khan told Scroll that Kartik trained for a year and a half in the three principal sports. The director also put him in the ring with international boxers, requiring him to hold his own physically. Kartik later admitted that he had overstated his swimming ability when discussing the role with Kabir Khan: he could keep himself afloat, but professional swimming was another matter. That little confidence boost at the casting stage came with a substantial repayment plan – months in the pool, in the ring and on the wrestling mat.
5. Sushant Singh Rajput - Cricket And Wicketkeeping For ‘M.S. Dhoni: The Untold Story’
Director: Neeraj Pandey | Released: September 30, 2016 | Worldwide gross: Rs 215.50 crore
Cricket fans know when a famous shot looks wrong. Playing Mahendra Singh Dhoni therefore required the late actor Sushant Singh Rajput to do more than swing a bat and trust the editor. The biopic, also starring Disha Patani, Kiara Advani and Anupam Kher, follows Dhoni’s journey from Ranchi to international cricket.
Sushant Singh Rajput had told Mint that he trained for 13 months with former India wicketkeeper Kiran More and a video analyst. Dhoni’s shots were broken into individual frames to study weight transfer and bat angles. Sushant recalled repeating a shot 300 times a day until it worked. More described coaching him like a real cricketer rather than simply preparing an actor for a few sporting scenes. The batting and wicketkeeping preparation was about acquiring technique, while the finer work involved making that technique look unmistakably like Dhoni’s.
6. Ranveer Singh - Kapil Dev’s Bowling Action For ‘83’
Director: Kabir Khan | Released: December 24, 2021 | Worldwide gross: Rs 193 crore
Ranveer had to reproduce a sporting silhouette that generations of Indians could identify from a distance. In ‘83’, he plays Kapil Dev leading India to its first men’s Cricket World Cup victory, alongside an ensemble including Deepika Padukone, Tahir Raj Bhasin, Jiiva, Saqib Saleem and Pankaj Tripathi.
Ranveer said he played cricket for four hours a day over six months, with another two hours devoted to physical conditioning. Recreating Kapil’s bowling was the hardest part: the run-up, arm movement and body mechanics needed sustained work. Coach and 1983 World Cup winner Balwinder Singh Sandhu initially found Ranveer’s physique too heavy and sent him away for a month to develop a more athletic build. Only then did the bowling begin to come together.
7. Priyanka Chopra - Boxing For ‘Mary Kom’
Director: Omung Kumar | Released: September 5, 2014 | Worldwide gross: Rs 91.33 crore
A boxing champion’s story needs the punches to carry weight before the emotional speeches can. Priyanka played Mary Kom in the biopic, with Darshan Kumaar as her husband and Sunil Thapa as her coach. The film follows the boxer’s sporting ambitions, family life and return to competition after motherhood.
Priyanka described three months of preparatory homework in an interview, explaining that she needed both to look like a boxer and to learn the sport. Her coaches worked on Mary Kom’s distinctive approach rather than teaching a generic screen-fighting routine. She also spoke about learning the competitive mindset, having had little sporting experience herself. The challenge was understanding how a boxer thinks, responds and occupies the ring, as well as developing the physical ability to portray one.
8. Farhan Akhtar - Sprinting Technique For ‘Bhaag Milkha Bhaag’
Director: Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra | Released: July 12, 2013 | Worldwide gross: Rs 168 crore
Everyone can recognise running. That does not mean everyone can convincingly run like Milkha Singh. Farhan’s preparation for ‘Bhaag Milkha Bhaag’, also starring Sonam Kapoor, Divya Dutta and Pavan Malhotra, focused on the mechanics behind the Flying Sikh’s stride as the film traced his life from Partition trauma to sporting achievement.
Athletics coach Melwyn Crasto described seven to eight months of rigorous preparation before filming, with training continuing during the shoot. He began with posture, gait, body coordination and running drills. Farhan separately explained how sessions isolated knee drive, leg extension and push-off, while Crasto helped reproduce Milkha’s inward-bending right-hand movement. Those details made the preparation much more specific than a fitness makeover.
9. Parineeti Chopra - Badminton For ‘Saina’
Director: Amole Gupte | Released: March 26, 2021 | Worldwide gross: Rs 1.50 crore
Holding a racket is easy. Moving around the court like a world-class shuttler is where the trouble begins. Parineeti played Saina Nehwal in ‘Saina’, alongside Manav Kaul, Meghna Malik and Eshan Naqvi, in a film following the badminton champion’s upbringing and rise through the sport.
Amole Gupte said Parineeti picked up badminton skills in six months. Trainer Naqvi, describing the seven-month window available to prepare her, explained that the work included footwork, endurance, power and learning to track the shuttle. She had not played badminton before, so these were fundamental skills being built for the role. The racket work was only one part of the assignment: learning where to move, when to react and how to sustain a rally took sustained coaching.
10. Diljit Dosanjh - Hockey For ‘Soorma’
Director: Shaad Ali | Released: July 13, 2018 | Worldwide gross: Rs 47 crore
Diljit Dosanjh could command a stage, but ‘Soorma’ required him to find his feet on a hockey pitch. He played Sandeep Singh in the comeback story, with Taapsee Pannu and Angad Bedi in key roles. The film follows the hockey player’s recovery after an accidental gunshot injury and his return to the sport.
In an interview with Outlook, Diljit said he completed a month of hockey training before shooting and spent considerable time with Sandeep Singh both before production and on set. Sandeep continued visiting the shoot to offer advice. That gave Diljit an unusually direct reference point: the person whose playing style he was trying to portray was there to guide him. The month-long pre-shoot course was therefore the beginning of the learning, with corrections and tips continuing while the cameras rolled.
11. Irrfan Khan - Steeplechase For ‘Paan Singh Tomar’
Director: Tigmanshu Dhulia | Released in Indian theatres: March 2, 2012 | Worldwide gross: Rs 17.05 crore
Before audiences watched Paan Singh Tomar become an outlaw, they needed to believe he had been an exceptional athlete. The late actor Irrfan Khan’s performance, alongside Mahie Gill and Vipin Sharma, follows the Army soldier and national steeplechase champion whose life takes a devastating turn.
Irrfan had said he exercised and underwent steeplechase training for three months. Tigmanshu Dhulia identified national coach Satpal Singh as his trainer and said Singh also spent about a month on location helping with the event’s details. Steeplechase demands more than running stamina: its barriers and water jump require technical preparation. That made it a particularly revealing example of an actor learning a specialised discipline.
12. Fatima Sana Shaikh And Sanya Malhotra - Wrestling For ‘Dangal’
Director: Nitesh Tiwari | Released: December 23, 2016 | Worldwide gross: Rs 2,070.30 crore
‘Dangal’ could hardly ask audiences to invest in Geeta and Babita Phogat if its wrestling looked like two actors cautiously waiting for the next choreographed move. Fatima and Sanya played the older sisters, alongside Aamir Khan, Sakshi Tanwar, Zaira Wasim and Suhani Bhatnagar.
Coach Kripa Shankar Bishnoi described a month of fitness-building followed by six months of wrestling instruction, including practice with wrestlers of different weights and work in mud akhadas. Sanya later recalled the broader training period as almost a year, with three hours of wrestling and two hours of fitness work on six days each week. The aim was to develop sporting instincts as well as rehearse the scenes. For Sanya, who had a dance background, that even meant learning to make her movements less graceful.
13. Ayushmann Khurrana - Piano For ‘Andhadhun’
Director: Sriram Raghavan | Released: October 5, 2018 | Worldwide gross: Rs 442.72 crore
Ayushmann already knew music, but ‘Andhadhun’ placed a new instrument between him and a convincing performance. He plays a pianist whose apparent visual impairment becomes entangled with a crime, alongside Tabu and Radhika Apte. Even before the plot starts playing tricks, the audience has to believe his relationship with the keyboard.
Ayushmann told The Quint that he trained intensively on piano for three to four months under Akshay Varma. His guitar experience helped with musical understanding, but the piano required a different coordination between the hands. Playing a character presented as blind added another difficulty: he could not keep looking down at the keys to check his work. That combination made the lessons central to the performance.
14. Tovino Thomas - Kalaripayattu For ‘Ajayante Randam Moshanam’
Director: Jithin Laal | Released: September 12, 2024 | Worldwide gross: Rs 107.32 crore
Tovino Thomas had three characters to distinguish in ‘Ajayante Randam Moshanam’, or ‘ARM’, and a martial art connecting them. The fantasy adventure, also starring Krithi Shetty, Aishwarya Rajesh, Surabhi Lakshmi and Basil Joseph, moves across generations through a story of ancestry, reputation and a coveted treasure.
Tovino told ETimes that he practised Kalaripayattu daily for six months, including two months before joining the sets. The work continued even when he was busy shooting, with his teacher travelling alongside him. He described learning the basics of an art that takes decades to master. Each character used those skills differently, from combat to theft and self-defence, so the training had to serve the personalities as well as the action.
15. Rukmini Vasanth - Sword Fighting And Horse Riding For ‘Kantara: Chapter 1’
Director: Rishab Shetty | Released: October 2, 2025 | Worldwide gross: Rs 852.36 crore
Princess Kanakavathi came with a demanding set of practical requirements. Rukmini Vasanth joined Rishab Shetty, Jayaram and Gulshan Devaiah in ‘Kantara: Chapter 1’, the prequel exploring an earlier chapter of the franchise’s world of land, power and sacred traditions.
Rukmini told Cinema Express that she learned sword fighting, dance and horse riding for the film. In a separate Indian Express interview, she described the learning curve as her steepest yet, noting that action preparation included something audiences rarely think about: learning to fall safely across repeated takes. The regal bearing was only part of the job; staying convincing when the action began required another set of lessons.
