Saurabh Shukla (born 5 March 1963) is a National Award-winning Indian actor, screenwriter, and film director who works in Hindi and a few Tamil and Telugu films. He is famous for his roles in Satya (1998), Nayak: The Real Hero (2001), Yuva (2004), Lage Raho Munna Bhai (2006), Barfi! (2012), Jolly LLB (2013), Kick (2014), PK (2014), Jolly LLB 2 (2017), Raid (2018) and Drishyam 2 (2022). He has also worked in a short documentary with Ruth Agnihotri and Rachael Agnihotri in Goa.
Born to Jogamaya Shukla, who was the first female tabla player of India and Shatrughan Shukla, a vocalist from Agra Gharana, Shukla's family left Gorakhpur for Delhi when he was two years old. He completed his schooling and did graduation from S.G.T.B. Khalsa College, Delhi. His professional career began in 1984 with entry into the theatre.[2]
He also appeared in a recurring albeit a short role of an aamir's jasoos (chieftain's spy) in the 1990s Doordarshan TV serial Mulla Nasiruddin, which had Raghubir Yadav in the lead role. The series was based on the folklore of Mulla Nasiruddin.
Shukla is also a part of a comic theater play 2 to Tango, 3 to Jive.[5]
Breakthrough (1998–present)
Shukla's biggest break came when he co-wrote the script for Ram Gopal Varma's 1998 cult classic Satya and played the role of gangster Kallu Mama in the film.[6] He won the Star Screen Award for Best Screenplay alongside Anurag Kashyap.
"Why do I make realistic films, like Satya? Because that's the kind of films I like to do. Capturing reality is very difficult and challenging," he said in a 2000 interview to Rediff.com, making it clear that he prefers realism in his scripts. In the same interview he also talked about his preferred genre of film making – comedy:
If you carefully see my work, it is all [comedy]. We usually categorize subjects as comedy and serious. But there is more than just this. Like when we laugh, we sometimes also cry. There can be certain viciousness to this action if there is too much of it. It is the same with romance, which gets too much after a point. There is always a comic element in every situation.[7]