Nawazuddin Siddiqui, born on 19 May 1974 in a small town of Muzaffarnagar district in Uttar Pradesh is an Indian actor, known for his works in Hindi cinema. His outstanding role was seen in Anurag Kashyap's Black Friday (2007), which won the Grand Jury Prize at the Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles and was a nominee for the Best Film (Golden Leopard) award at the Locarno Film Festival. Also, he was awarded in the Special Jury Award at the 60th National Film Awards 2012, for his work in the films Kahaani, Gangs of Wasseypur, Dekh Indian Circus and Talaash.[44] He has been honored by Sandeep Marwah with a life membership in the International Film and Television Club of the Asian Academy of Film & Television. His first lead role in a feature film was in Prashant Bhargava's Patang, which premiered at the Berlin Film Festival, for which his performance has been praised by noted film critic Roger Ebert awarding the film 4/4 stars, a role which "transformed his acting style".He appeared in four major films of 2012 – Kahaani, Gangs of Wasseypur, Gangs of Wasseypur – Part 2 and Talaash, all of which earned him wide critical reception and awards including Screen Award for Best Supporting Actor, Zee Cine Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role – Male both for his role as Taimur in Talaash: The Answer Lies Within as well as Stardust Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in Gangs of Wasseypur.
Apart from all these achievements, his struggle before Bollywood career was not so easy. Before coming to the Bollywood he has travelled a long way from watchman to Indian Cinema as he was born in a small town of Muzaffarnagar district in Uttar Pradesh from a Muslim family, where education is hard to get, he, along with his six brothers and two sisters, managed to get whatever they could where his father is a farmer. After that, he went to Haridwar for completing his graduation from a university where he worked as a chemist at a petrochemical company in Baroda. Unable to cope, he moved to Delhi and worked as a watchman at various places. In this process, he frequently visited theatres and plays and started to participate in them. He went on to join the National School of Drama (NSD) and graduated from it in 1996. It all started going uphill for him after this step, and his versatility is the personification of how success comes from never giving up. Having acquired a relevant degree, he moved to Mumbai to try his luck in Bollywood, but he didn't even have enough money to pay rent. He walked from studio to studio, set to set, all day, finding himself doing only petty roles or the ones where he was just a part of a crowd. He approached an NSD senior asking if he could stay at his place, who agreed to it under the condition that Nawaz cooked twice a day.
He made his film debut with Aamir Khan's Sarfarosh in 1999, where he played a terrorist. This was followed by small roles over the next few years and his poverty still continued during this period of time. He even acted in television serials and a few short films but his big break was Black Friday (2007) by Anurag Kashyap. His first major lead role was as a wedding singer in Patang, which made it to the Berlin International Film Festival and Tribeca Film Festival. However, he got real recognition from the movie Peepli Live, where he played a journalist. The year 2012 was the turning point for him with films like Kahaani and Gangs of Wasseypur doing so well at the box office and that was when the world got to identify the real potential of this wonderful actor. Nawaz didn't look back after that. He went on to act in big movies after that. In one of the interviews with DNA India, He said, "It’s a sense of satisfaction because I proved all of to my friends and relatives wrong. All of them said ‘how will he become a hero’ when I set out. When I go back now they say ‘he has done it’. I made it possible."From being just an extra and a prop to being a lead actor and traveling to film festivals like Cannes and currently being one of the most talented and versatile actors of the Indian film industry, his story is quite an inspirational rags-to-riches tale.
"So many of our dreams at first seem impossible, then they seem improbable, and then, when we summon the will, they soon become inevitable."

[ Article by: shikha shrivastava ]