Saurabh Shukla
Shukla at the screening of Sonata
Born	5 March 1963 (1963-03-05) (age 62)[citation needed] Gorakhpur,Uttar Pradesh,India
Occupations	Actor, film director, screenwriter
Years active	1984–present

Saurabh Shukla (born 5 March 1963)^[1] is anIndian actor, screenwriter, and film director who works inHindi and a fewTamil andTelugu films. He is best known for his roles inSatya (1998),Nayak: The Real Hero (2001),Yuva (2004),Lage Raho Munna Bhai (2006),Barfi! (2012),Jolly LLB (2013); for the latter, he won theNational Film Award forBest Supporting Actor.^[2] Other notable films areKick (2014),PK (2014),Jolly LLB 2 (2017) andRaid (2018). He has also worked in a short documentary with Ruth Agnihotri and Rachael Agnihotri inGoa.

Born to Jogamaya Shukla, who was the first female tabla player of India and Shatrughan Shukla, a vocalist fromAgra Gharana, Shukla's family leftGorakhpur forDelhi when he was two years old. He completed his schooling from Ludlow Castle No 3 (behind I P College)Delhi and did graduation fromS.G.T.B. Khalsa College, Delhi. His professional career began in 1984 with entry into the theatre.^[3]

Shukla began pursuing theatre in 1986 with roles in plays likeA View From The Bridge (Arthur Miller),Look Back in Anger (John Osborne),Ghashiram Kotwal (Vijay Tendulkar) andHayvadan. In 1991, he joined the NSD Repertoire Company – the professional wing of theNational School of Drama – as an actor.^[3] The following year, he got his first break whenShekhar Kapur, impressed with his work, roped him in for a role inBandit Queen.^[4]

Shukla also played the role ofVijay Anand'ssidekick Gopi in the 1994Doordarshancrime dramaTehkikaat. The series was directed byKaran Razdan, but Shekhar Kapur directed the first episode. He also wrote and acted inZee TV's9 Malabar Hill.^[5]

He also appeared in a recurring albeit a short role of an Aamir's Jasoos (chieftain's spy) in the 1990s Doordarshan TV serialMulla Nasiruddin, which hadRaghubir Yadav in the lead role. The series was based on the folklore of Mulla Nasiruddin.

Shukla is also a part of a comic theater play2 to Tango, 3 to Jive.^[6]

Shukla's biggest break came when he co-wrote the script forRam Gopal Varma's 1998 cult classicSatya and played the role of gangster Kallu Mama in the film.^[7] He won theStar Screen Award for Best Screenplay alongsideAnurag Kashyap.^[8]

"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 toRediff.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.^[9]

In 2003, he wrote the screenplay forCalcutta Mail.^[10] He received his first award for this film, theZee Cine Award for Best Screenplay.^[11] In 2008, he acted in his first international film, theGolden Globe andAcademy Award-winningSlumdog Millionaire, as the character Constable Srinivas.^[12] In 2013, he appeared as policeman Sudhanshu DuttainBarfi!, a film through which directorAnurag Basu and co-actorRanbir Kapoor, he said, "revived [him] as an actor".^[13]

Shukla won theNational Film Award and theScreen Award for the Best Actor in a Supporting Role for his performance inJolly LLB.^[18]

• Saurabh Shukla atIMDb

• 1963 births
• Living people
• Indian male film actors
• Male actors from Delhi
• People from Gorakhpur
• Indian male television actors
• Indian male stage actors
• Indian male screenwriters
• Hindi-language film directors
• Delhi University alumni
• Best Supporting Actor National Film Award winners
• Screen Awards winners
• Male actors in Hindi cinema
• Film directors from Delhi
• Screenwriters from Delhi
• Hindi-language screenwriters
• Hindi-language Indian writers

• Webarchive template wayback links
• Articles with short description
• Short description is different from Wikidata
• Use British English from August 2014
• All Wikipedia articles written in British English
• Use dmy dates from August 2014
• All articles with unsourced statements
• Articles with unsourced statements from January 2025
• Articles with hCards