The 5 Best Performances of Varun Dhawan, Ranked

Most actors try. The intent is endearing. But some actors make an art out of trying. The intent itself becomes a performance. This pretty much sums up the young career of Varun Dhawan. As one of the original ‘students of the year,’ Dhawan is genetically endowed — a film family, a comic legacy, industry goodwill, a ready-made launchpad into the stars. But if there’s one thing we’ve learnt from the nepo-baby syndrome, it’s that privilege can be the ultimate curse. The struggle to be can consume the struggle to become. What Dhawan has made of his privilege matters. For every Main Tera Hero (2014), there’s been a Badlapur (2015). For every Judwaa 2 (2017) or Bawaal (2023), there’s been an October (2018) or Bhediya (2022). There is, in other words, no dearth of desire. He succeeds as much as he doesn’t. His screen presence is undeniable; it’s partly defined by the fact that he always seems to be punching above his weight.

2024 has seen Varun Dhawan in an action phase. But he’s touched both ends of the genre spectrum. After making his long-form debut as an action hero with Raj & DK’s Citadel: Honey Bunny, he is set to be the mass hero of the Atlee-shaped Baby John, the final big-ticket release of 2024. On that note, perhaps the timing is ripe to explore five of his most striking performances:

5. Badrinath Ki Dulhania (2017)

Rarely has the softening of a potentially toxic and abusive character felt so satisfying — and unpretentious. Varun Dhawan plays Badri Bansal, a rich small-town guy from a patriarchal family who falls for a smart and career-minded woman (Alia Bhatt). Badri’s lack of wokeness is almost an antidote to both sides of the scale: the crude-but-self-aware lover of Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahaani (2023) as well as the righteous arrogance of Kabir Singh (2019). He takes it for granted that a rakish chap like him is destined to win the girl over. When she realises that he might be a red flag, Dhawan lends Badri’s heartbreak the humanity of a steep learning curve. That controversial scene in Singapore — where Badri literally kidnaps her for a violent ‘confrontation’ — might have been unsalvageable in most modern actors’ hands. But Dhawan invites a forgive-him-for-he-knows-no-better reaction; he leaves some space for absolution. Badri’s change, too, is plausible for the way the actor makes it seem like he’s going against years of regressive conditioning. Badri’s longing is so unlettered that it’s innocent. The film isn’t perfect, but it’s a testament to Dhawan’s alt-masculinity that the improvement of his characters often reflect the performer’s hunger to evolve. In doing so, he manifests a famous line from one of his father’s most underrated comedies: “Baby steps, baby steps”.

4. Jugjugg Jeeyo (2022)

Dhawan excels at playing unlikable and immature men who are just about redeemable. That’s because, unlike a Ranbir Kapoor character, masculinity isn’t a condition; it’s something a Varun Dhawan character is often uncertain about, and it’s something that also conceals a sense of growth and kindness. Of his similar ‘romantic’ roles (Badrinath Ki Dulhania, Bawaal) as a man-child whose adulthood is activated by love, Jugjugg Jeeyo is probably his most evolved. Dhawan’s Kukoo Saini is a husband going through a divorce with his more successful wife (Kiara Advani) — until he learns that his father (Anil Kapoor) wants a divorce too. Kukoo should be a triggering character for most Indian men; his reverence for his charismatic dad blinds him from seeing his hypocrisies as a partner. It’s not an easy turn, particularly when Kukoo is forced to confront the possibility that his parents’ marriage — which set the bar high enough for him to fail — was its own kind of sham. His screaming match with his wife is one of Dhawan’s best moments as an actor; you can sense Kukoo’s ego stopping him from being a better person, and even though he’s aware of it, there’s nothing he can do about it. The patriarchy-coded guilt is a sight for cynical eyes.

3. Bhediya (2022)

The post-Stree 2 (2024) Amar Kaushik is the talk of the town, but perhaps his most accomplished film is Bhediya — a rare beast whose poignant 20-minute climax is centered almost entirely on (VFX) animals. But that’s also a reductive way to describe this ambitious environmental thriller disguised as a horror comedy. Bhediya stars Dhawan as Bhaskar, a greedy contractor who helms a deforestation project in Arunachal Pradesh only to be transformed — quite literally — by a bite on his butt. Bhaskar becomes a vigilante werewolf at night, with an appetite for all the corrupt officials planning to destroy trees and displace the indigenous residents. Dhawan’s comic timing is on point, but it’s his commitment to the physicality of the role — particularly in a Thriller-like metamorphosis scene — that supplies the film’s gravity. Something about Dhawan’s natural eagerness to do better syncs with his character’s vanity-free transition. A funny scene features Bhaskar’s friends trying to psych the wolf out of him; he keeps trying, but with mixed results. At some point, this becomes a meta portrait of a Bollywood star shedding his skin and willing an intense performance out of himself.

2. Badlapur (2015)

Nobody expected Varun Dhawan in a Sriram Raghavan film, especially after he had established himself as an unserious Govinda-coded hero in his first three career releases (Student of the Year, Main Tera Hero, Humpty Sharma Ki Dulhania). At times in Badlapur, it looked like not even Dhawan expected to be in the film. But this greenness and lack of experience is precisely what supplies his character Raghu — who slowly becomes a modern-day origin story of 1960s serial killer Raman Raghav — in Raghavan’s brutal revenge thriller. The grief of suddenly losing his wife and kid in a botched bank robbery numbs Raghu; he mutates into a cold-blooded murderer that puts even the film’s “villain” Liaq (Nawazuddin Siddiqui) to shame. Dhawan’s deadpan and dazed rampage works wonders because we never see enough of his ‘original’ personality — minutes into his introduction, he hears of the tragedy and his spiral begins. This hints at the fact that perhaps Raghu was always like this; maybe his performance was that of a family man, and grief might have simply unlocked the beast within. It’s an appropriately primal performance, one that lets us read between the faultlines and the flesh wounds.

1. October (2018)

Most performers have limitations, but it’s up to good film-makers to understand and harness the energy of these limitations. With October, Shoojit Sircar does this perfectly with the inherent “lostness” — but also a boyish earnestness — of Varun Dhawan. Dhawan’s character, Dan, looks unsure and confused about what he feels; he appears to have no clue about why he’s so attached to a comatose hotel-management colleague. Dan thrives on this lilting directionless-ness; he’s just there, in the moment, caring for a stranger he thinks he intimately knows. There’s a diffidence about the actor in his more dramatic roles, which allows the viewer to project their own feelings onto the film. You can tell that Dhawan is trying to figure out the anti-story and the man he plays in every scene; he’s no closer to this by the end, and this somehow informs the emotional ambivalence of Dan’s journey. Call it what you will, but this vulnerability to ask questions on screen and not have the answers is what distinguishes Dhawan from many of his contemporaries. October may not have hit as hard with more accomplished or less present ‘heroes’. It’s hard to imagine the film without the moody dissipation of Dan’s — and Dhawan’s — sheltered effort and main character energy. His stardom is linked to October’s muted in-betweenness. Losing all inhibitions is one thing, but weaponising them is another. Somewhere along the way, Dhawan becomes the one.