Akshay Kumar is an Indian actor, television presenter, and film producer who works in Hindi-language films. He had a minor role in the 1987 Indian film Aaj . [1] [2] He debuted in a leading role with the film Saugandh (1991) before his breakthrough with Khiladi (1992), first film of the Khiladi series. [3] [4] In 1994, Kumar featured in 14 releases, including the successful Elaan , Mohra , Main Khiladi Tu Anari , Suhaag and the romantic drama Yeh Dillagi , which earned him a Filmfare Award for Best Actor nomination. He also found success with Khiladiyon Ka Khiladi (1996) and Dil To Pagal Hai (1997), which earned him a Filmfare Award for Best Supporting Actor nomination. [5] However, several other of his 1990s releases performed poorly at the box office, leading to a brief setback in his film career. [6] [7] [8] [9] [10]
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The 1999 crime drama Jaanwar marked Kumar's comeback. [6] [11] His next films Hera Pheri (2000), Dhadkan (2000) and Ajnabee (2001) were well received. He played a negative role in the latter, winning the Filmfare Best Villain Award and then appeared in Andaaz (2003), Aitraaz (2004), Khakee (2004) and Aan: Men at Work (2004) and Waqt (2005). [2] [12] In this period, Kumar also proved himself as a great comic actor when he featured in financially successful comedies like Mujhse Shaadi Karogi (2004), Garam Masala (2005), Bhagam Bhag (2006), Phir Hera Pheri (2006), Namastey London (2007), Heyy Babyy (2007), Welcome (2007), Bhool Bhulaiyaa (2007), Singh Is Kinng (2008), Housefull (2010) and Tees Maar Khan (2010). He won the Filmfare Best Comedian Award for Garam Masala. [13] [2] [12] In 2004, he presented the television series Seven Deadly Arts with Akshay Kumar . [14] [15] In 2008, he founded the Hari Om Entertainment production company, [16] and hosted the first season of the reality game show Fear Factor: Khatron Ke Khiladi . Next year he was honoured with the Padma Shri, India's fourth highest civilian award, for his services to the Indian film industry. [17] [18] Kumar hosted the first season of MasterChef India in 2010. In 2011 he founded another production company Grazing Goat Pictures, [19] and produced the Indo-Canadian hockey-based film Breakaway , which became the highest grossing cross-cultural film at the Canadian box office. [20]
Kumar again conquered the domestic box office in 2012 with his hit masala film Rowdy Rathore , the comedies Housefull 2 and Khiladi 786 , and the satire OMG – Oh My God! with the former two being his first films to enter 100 Crore Club. [21] [22] Shortly thereafter, he established a great box office pull with multiple diverse successful projects like the heist film Special 26 (2013), the action thrillers Holiday (2014) and Airlift (2016), the spy drama Baby (2015), the masala film Gabbar Is Back (2015), the comedies Singh Is Bliing (2015) and Housefull 3 (2016), the crime thriller Rustom (2016), the dramas Jolly LLB 2 (2017), Toilet: Ek Prem Katha (2017) and Padman (2018), the sports film Gold (2018) and the war film Kesari (2019); for Rustom, he won the National Film Award for Best Actor. [23] [24] [25] [26] He hosted Dare 2 Dance in 2014 and debuted in Tamil cinema with a negative role in the expensive sci-fi extravaganza 2.0 (2018) which is the fifth highest-grossing Indian film. [27] In 2019 he delivered four consecutive 200 Crore Club films with Mission Mangal , Housefull 4 , Good Newwz , and Kesari. This was followed by a steady career decline, with the exception of the action film Sooryavanshi (2021) and the comedy-drama OMG 2 (2023) and Shaheed Bhagat Singh (2026).
