“He loves watching Rajinikanth,” he says, referring to a south Indian actor whose film release dates have been declared holidays by companies in an effort to avoid hundreds of staff requests for leave. He learned it on his own by watching TV,” says Dilip. You have to follow all their instructions and you have to try to show real emotion, from the heart.” When he signals, I know I have to be sad,” he says. “I’ve learned so much, like the sign language of the director for example. “I want to work in Hollywood, Bollywood, everything,” he says. They haven’t even seen the film,” he says.
#SUNNY CAME HOME OFFICIAL VIDEO MOVIE#
Between travelling to locations for shoots, he attends the government-run Air India Modern school where, he says, he gets none of the benefits of being a movie star. Sunny was only five when he started auditioning for the role of Saroo. “I was waiting for Sunny and his dad to come home so we could watch it together, as a family. Overnight, I’ve become the mother of a movie star.” She admits she hasn’t seen the film yet. “Now everybody says, ‘Oh, a Hollywood star lives in our neighbourhood’. “He was just a normal little boy,” says Vasu, Sunny’s mother. “No, he’s Sunny’s acting coach,” says another. “He must be some singer or something,” says one child.
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All of them claim they’ve watched Sunny’s film, though it’s easy to call their bluff as none of them recognises Dev Patel, the film’s lead actor, who also starred in Slumdog Millionaire. There is a floor-to-ceiling photo montage of Sunny meeting American celebrities, as well as Barack Obama and Bill Clinton.Ĭhildren from the slum who wander past after school point excitedly at the pictures, whispering, “That’s Sunny meeting the Rock,” referring to the WWE wrestler-turned-actor, Dwayne Johnson. Posters slapped on the slum’s walls read: “Congratulations Sunny on your achievement.” Outside the house, the family have set up a stage, carpeted in red and covered in confetti left over from a welcome home ceremony. The film has turned Sunny into a local hero. “My first son, and he has made me so proud.” “I never, ever thought I’d reach this point in my life,” says Dilip. For the past two years, he has been Sunny’s business manager, touring the world and helping him practise lines on set. His father used to sweep streets, but was fired for having too many days off to take Sunny to auditions. “They came to his school to do auditions, and the director says he was a natural in front of the camera.” “He was selected from over 2,000 children,” says Dilip. But with a tightly knit, powerful film fraternity that rarely embraces outsiders, successes like Sunny’s are few and precious. Thousands of people travel to the city from small towns and villages around the country every day, hoping to be cast in a Bollywood blockbuster. In Mumbai, home to the world’s most prolific film industry, making it into the movies is the epitome of success. They wouldn’t leave until Sunny’s grandfather shouted at them for harassing the kid,” he says. They even came back to our house with us, and they stayed until 4am. The reporters crowded around him, ‘Sunny look here, Sunny do this’.
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“They brought flowers and covered him with garlands. “They beat drums, they set off fireworks,” says Dilip, Sunny’s father. “We all went and nobody knew where the arrival gate was, so all of us were squashed in that airport lift, going up and down until we found him.” “He has brought a good name to our whole family,” says Raviraj, a distant relative who was there. A swarm of local news crews and journalists greeted them at the airport along with a mob of relatives. Sunny and his father returned to India on a flight that landed at 2am on Wednesday. Some have criticised Kimmel for using Sunny as a prop in a racist joke, but Sunny doesn’t see it that way. The whirlwind journey ended last week after the Oscars, where a beaming Sunny was lifted into the air by the host Jimmy Kimmel, as The Lion King’s title track played in the background. “First Kolkata, then Indore, then Australia and then America for three months.”
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Neither he nor his father had left India. Sitting outside his family home in the Kunchi Kurve Nagar slum near Mumbai’s airport, Sunny recalls being whisked around the world with an international film crew.