When Chunky Panday went on a signing spree at the start of his career

Mumbai, Sep 5 (IANS) An old video of Chunky Panday, who was last seen in web series ‘Industry’, has resurfaced on the Internet showing the actor talking about what went wrong in the initial phase of his career.
The video shared by ‘Lehren’ shows the ‘Tezaab’ fame actor dressed in police uniform, recollecting how he went on a signing spree.
“When I got my first film and started shooting for it, I had nothing to lose. I thought, ‘Okay, let’s do this and see what happens’. When the film released, and the kind of response it got, I was over the moon. I felt like I won a lottery,” Chunky Panday is heard saying in the video.
He added, “I then became a lot more serious about my career. But then, I thought it’s better to have more films in my kitty. So, I went on a signing spree. I said yes to 15-20 films, and didn’t see who was directing them or what the stories were. However, a majority of the films that I signed didn’t get good response.”
Chunky Panday made his debut in 1987 with the film ‘Aag Hi Aag’.
The 1990s saw the rise of actors like Aamir Khan, Salman Khan, and Shah Rukh Khan, who took on roles as ‘romantic heroes’, while Akshay Kumar, Suniel Shetty, and Ajay Devgn established themselves as action heroes.
Sunny Deol and Govinda, meanwhile, remained established actors in their respective genres, leaving little room for Chunky Panday who found it difficult to slot himself in either category.
In addition, by the late nineties, solo-hero films were back in trend instead of the multi-hero films in which Panday was generally cast. The actor was not seen as marketable for solo-hero films.
–IANS
aa/arm