Rajkumar Hirani

Early life and education

Hirani was born on 20 November 1962 in Nagpur to a Sindhi family. His father Suresh Hirani ran a typing institute in Nagpur. Rajkumar Hirani studied at St. Francis De'Sales High School, Nagpur, Maharashtra. Rajkumar did his graduation in commerce. His parents wanted him to be a Chartered Accountant but he was more keen on theatres, and films. Hirani helped his father in his business but he wanted to be actor in Hindi films. In college days he was involved with Hindi theatre. Suresh got his son's photographs shot and packed him off to an acting school in Mumbai. But Raju could not blend in and returned to Nagpur after three days. His father then asked Raju to apply to the Film and Television Institute of India in Pune, but the acting course had shut down by then and chances of admission to the directorial course looked slim as there were far too many applicants. So Raju opted for the editing course. He earned a scholarship, thereby reducing the load on his father's shoulders.

Early career

Hirani tried his luck as a film editor for many years. Bad experiences forced him to shift to advertising, and gradually established himself as a director and producer of advertising films. He was also seen in a Fevicol ad where some men and elephants were trying to pull and break a Fevicol plank saying "Jor laga ke Haisha". He was also seen in the Kinetic Luna ad campaign created by Ogilvy & Mather. He was doing fairly well in the advertisement industry but he wanted to make movies so he took a break from advertisement and started working with Vidhu Vinod Chopra. He worked on promos and trailers for 1942: A Love Story. He edited promotions for Kareeb. He got his first big opportunity as a film editor with Mission Kashmir.

Munnabhai MBBS and afterwards

Rajkumar Hirani's first directorial venture was Munnabhai MBBS (2003), starring Sanjay Dutt, which is considered a cult classic. Munnabhai MBBS broke all formulaic conventions associated with Bollywood films. Made on a budget of Rs. 10 million, it was a huge hit worldwide and took a distributor share of Rs. 25 million from the Indian market. His second directorial effort was Lage Raho Munnabhai which had a strong cultural impact in India, popularising Gandhism under Munna Bhai's notion of Gandhigiri.

His third film was the comedy 3 Idiots starring Aamir Khan, R. Madhavan, Sharman Joshi, Kareena Kapoor, Omi Vaidya, Parikshit Sahni and Boman Irani. The film was also very well received by the critics. 3 Idiots became the highest grosser in Indian cinema shattering all records across Indian and overseas markets.

His fourth film was the alien satirical drama PK, which starred Aamir Khan, Saurabh Shukla and Anushka Sharma in lead roles. It was released on 19 December 2014 and broke existing records in India and became the highest grossing Indian film collecting over Rs.500 crore at the box office.

Currently, Hirani is filming Dutt, a biopic on Sanjay Dutt, with Ranbir Kapoor playing Dutt's role. Hirani and his co-writer Abhijat Joshi have written the screenplay of the film. The film is slated to release in late 2017.

All four of Hirani's films have been critical and commercial successes, fetching him four National Film Awards and 11 Filmfare Awards.

Awards

Winner