The last one decade in the Hindi film industry was filled with movies which can easily be placed in the ‘hall of fame’ of all-time great Hindi film cinema.
The sophistication developed in the generic taste of Indian audiences has also helped expand the artistic wings of filmmakers and actors, beyond what ‘Indian cinema’ was internationally known for, just the decade before.
This has also resulted in some standout performances, which certainly need to be acknowledged for setting the benchmark high for what is to follow in the exciting new phase of Hindi cinema.
Be it Manoj Bajpayee or Nawazuddin Siddiqui – there is a long string of talented actors, who have raised the bar too high for others to follow, with their unorthodox performances in movies like ‘Gangs Of Wasseypur’ or ‘Haraamkhor.’
Our latest top 10 focuses on ten such incredible examples of sublime acting performances.
Starting from Bajpayee’s iconic character of Sardar Khan in Anurag Kashyap’s modern-day cult classic, Gangs Of Wasseypur to the actor’s yet another world-class performance in Hansal Mehta’s Aligarh – which saw him portray the real-life character of a gay professor who was outed and humiliated for engaging sexually with another man, our list focuses on the best of cinema, irrespective of the numbers at the box office.
Among females – the likes of Kangana Ranaut, Kalki Koechlin and Richa Chaddha proved their acting metal in movies like Queen, Margarita With a Straw and Gangs Of Wasseypur, respectively.
While Kangana curated one of the most lovable characters in Indian cinema with Queen, and delivered her lines so organically that you could hardly picture her as anyone else but ‘Raani’, Kalki Koechlin totally transformed herself into an aspiring and dreamy-eyed young girl suffering from Cerebral Palsy, to such an extent that you forget the role is being played by an able-bodied woman.
Richa Chaddha wowed us with her rustic and gritty performance in Wasseypur, standing out in an ensemble cast of her extremely talented co-stars.
The advent of talents like Nawazuddin and Rajkumar Rao – brought a breeze of fresh air, allowing them to project their art on celluloid in movies like Manto and Shahid – both of which get a mention in the top 10.
So without much ado, here is our list of the ten best performances in Hindi movies in the last decade:
The last ten years alone have been a proof, that Indian cinema is at the level of producing world-class artistic movies and the next ten years might just prove even more glorious for talents like these.