Updated On: 21 June, 2025 07:04 AM IST | Mumbai | mid-day online correspondent
Before making his Bollywood debut, Randeep Hooda was living every aspiring actor’s dream – getting paid by a studio, month on month, while Ram Gopal Varma hunted for the perfect launch pad

Randeep Hooda
Randeep Hooda completed 20 years in the film industry this year. The actor feels that he is currently in the best phase of his life. However, the beginning of his career was marked by unexpected breaks. He had featured in a movie called Monsoon Wedding, which was released in 2001, before making a proper Hindi film debut in D.
In a conversation with Mid-day’s Sit With Hitlist series, Randeep Hooda opened up about not taking any projects between 2001 and 2005, when his first Hindi film D was released.
Randeep revealed that Ram Gopal Varma had offered him a film called Ek, in which he was supposed to play a supervillain alongside actors like Ajay Devgn, Suniel Shetty, Naseeruddin Shah, Amitabh Bachchan, and other big names of that time. However, the film never got made.