Vivek Oberoi has offered one of his most explicit accounts of the career stall that followed his early 2000s breakthrough. Speaking to the YouTube channel Relearn, he says the problem was not the audience or a shortage of offers. It was, by his telling, a powerful lobby that marked him as “persona non grata” after he took a stand against something he saw as wrong.
By then, Oberoi had built a run that promised stardom: Company, Saathiya and Yuva had made him one of Hindi cinema’s most watched new faces. He says he was being groomed as the next movie star, and then the environment around him changed quickly.
What he says happened
Oberoi claims that once the lobby closed ranks, he was removed from films he had already signed. Some of the people who had initially backed him, he says, withdrew after receiving threats from the underworld. As he recalls it, the message was blunt: continue working with him and face the consequences. He says those around him told him they could not take that risk with their lives or their families.
He describes the period as “real hell.” The work stopped not because he lacked ability, he argues, but because of circumstances beyond his control. The isolation left him bitter, cynical and angry. Peers, he says, abandoned him, and he became what he calls a “soft target.” Media attacks and public humiliation, by his account, fed an inner spiral of heavy drinking, unchannelled rage and self-hate.
Why this matters now
Oberoi’s account is more than a personal grievance. It is a first-person record of how the Hindi film industry can withdraw opportunity through private networks rather than box-office verdicts. Oberoi’s version does not name the individuals involved, but it does give texture to long-running trade rumours. For readers who follow the business, the distinction matters: a leading man did not fade because of a flop, but because intermediaries chose not to work with him.
- Before the setback, Oberoi had hits in Company, Saathiya and Yuva.
- He says he was removed from signed films and avoided after threats allegedly reached his backers.
- He calls the fallout “real hell”: anger, alcohol, self-hate and constant media attack.
- He is currently cast as Vidyutjihva in Namit Malhotra’s Ramayana.
The current Ramayana role gives the next test of that rehabilitation. A mythological project is a very different stage from the gangster and romantic roles that made his name, and it will show whether the industry’s current gatekeepers treat him as a viable star again.
Source: The Times of India
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