Adarsh Gourav, the breakout star of The White Tiger is finding incredible amounts of international acclaim. After being nominated in the lead category of the soon-to-be-held BAFTA and Film Independent Spirit Awards, the actor has been conferred with the Rising Star Award by the Asian World Film Festival. 

Now, during a chat organised by The Museum of Modern Art, Adarsh talked about his experience of working at a food stall in Delhi to prep for the film The White Tiger. “I was basically cleaning plates and sweeping the floor. I got paid 100 a day. I worked there for two weeks, 12 hours a day, and it was incredible, eye-opening and the hardest thing I have done in my life. There were moments when I would suddenly snap out of it, like, ‘What the hell am I doing here?’” he said.

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“I would be in the middle of cleaning a plate using less soap because if I would use too much soap, he would get pissed, saying, ‘You can’t use so much soap in a day.’ And I would be like, ‘What am I doing here?’ Because there would be a big bandicoot running next to me, from an open sewer, and then I would be like, ‘This is exactly what Balram felt when he was in the village because he knew his real potential was a lot more than being just confined to the boundaries of a village, and he wanted to get out of that rooster coop, as Adiga calls it.’ I just wanted to experience that feeling of anonymity, insignificance and I stuck around for two weeks, till we started our script-reading sessions,” he added.

Adarsh has been on a nonstop spree of accolades for his incredible portrayal of Balram Halwai in the Netflix production which released earlier this year.