Eight Years of Small Roles: The Pankaj Tripathi Story
When casting director Mukesh Chhabra's office phoned about a butcher-henchman role in Gangs of Wasseypur, Pankaj Tripathi assumed it was one more small part to add to a long list. He had no idea it would change his life.
A farmer's son from Belsand
He was born into a farming family in Belsand, a village in Gopalganj, Bihar. He helped his father in the fields and grew up watching plays in the village. His mother tongue is Bhojpuri, and he could read Hindi but not speak it comfortably. After Class X he went to Patna, because his father hoped he would become a doctor.
The stage in Patna
In Patna he started watching theatre at Kalidas Rangalaya, then spent two years with Bihar Art Theatre. A magazine told him that actors like Anupam Kher and Om Puri trained at the National School of Drama, and that became the goal.
Three attempts
From 1999 he applied to NSD every year. He was rejected twice, and got in on the third attempt in 2001. He also had to convince his father. He graduated in 2004.
The long middle
He moved to Mumbai in 2004 and took small roles in films like Run, Apaharan, Omkara, Shaurya, Raavan and Agneepath. This went on for about eight years, with visits to casting offices in Andheri. He doesn't tell it as a story of sleeping on footpaths. In his words, the struggle was "more internal than external."
2012
Then came Sultan Qureshi in Gangs of Wasseypur. After that, Fukrey, Nil Battey Sannata, Newton, Masaan, Stree and Mirzapur followed, and he is now a National Award-winning actor. Looking back this year, he described those waiting years as "a seeding process," which fits a farmer's son.
What artists can take from it
Apply again. Two rejections didn't end it.
Train properly. He spent three years at NSD.
Small roles are not wasted. Eight years of them built the craft.
Keep showing up. He kept visiting offices, with no guarantee.
Be ready for an ordinary-looking call. The big one sounded like all the others.
Sources: ANI interview (2026), YourStory (2017), The Better India, IMDb biography, The Established.
Images are illustrative and AI-generated, not photographs of the people mentioned.