Vidyut Jammwal has made a career out of taking leaps. He takes his career’s biggest one now by playing Dhalsim in his Hollywood debut, Kitao Sakurai’s martial arts comedy Street Fighter. A fan of the video game series it’s based on, Vidyut “unfortunately missed” out on watching a previous adaptation, Steven E de Souza’s 1994 movie headlined by Jean-Claude Van Damme. Having grown up on Van Damme’s action films, he hopes that his Street Fighter franchise turns out to be even bigger than that film, which amassed $99.4 million on a budget of $35 million.“I hope Street Fighter, as a franchise, does really well. I hope the next time I meet people, they say this Street Fighter was incredible. I hope the whole universe likes the movie,” Vidyut tells SCREEN in an exclusive interview. The actor’s role of Dhalsim was essayed by veteran British-Indian actor Roshan Seth, but that was met with a lot of criticism for poking fun at Indian culture. But Vidyut feels his Dhalsim is better researched.“Dhalsim’s background is very relatable because he’s a yoga master and uses his breath as a medium to fight. So, for me, it was exactly the way it was meant to be. I really enjoyed it. To be a martial artist and to play a character who does the same martial arts, and has the same fighting skills as you, it’s quite an honour to be playing it,” says the actor with a training in Kalaripayattu, an Indian martial art form that originated in Kerala.Unlike Street Fighter (1994), which only had Dhalsim bald in the last three scenes, Vidyut is seen in that look right from the start till the end, staying true to the character’s appearance in the video games. “Since I knew Dhalsim is the way he is in the movie, I was prepared for it. There was nothing I’d be surprised of. I had the option of shaving my head or wearing prosthetic headgear. I was okay with shaving my head also, but I think this looked nice and we went ahead with it,” he says.Ever since his first look came out, it’s being lauded by not only Indian fans back home, but also the global audience. “I love that people have embraced the look of me being bald. I wasn’t skeptical, but the response has been very, very good. I’ve been enjoying that internationally, people have been dwelling into the fact that there’s an action hero who’s been cast from India,” he adds.Street Fighter boasts of an ensemble of action stars, led by Noah Centineo and Andrew Koji, and also starring former WWE champions Roman Reigns and Cody Rhodes. That was also a huge honour for Vidyut, who’s always been a WWE nerd. “All the stunts that I’ve done in my movies have somewhere been inspired by the WWE. Everything I watched in the WWE, I thought, ‘This is difficult. I wanted to do it in my movie.’ To share screen space with all these guys is incredible,” he says. Vidyut Jammwal and Cody Rhodes in Street Fighter.Vidyut Jammwal’s 15-year journey at the moviesLast month also marked another milestone for Vidyut — he completed 15 years as an actor in the Hindi film industry. His first onscreen appearance was in a blink-and-miss role in Amol Gupte’s 2011 dramedy Stanley Ka Dabba. “I played a guy who comes on a bike to drop the leading lady. That wasn’t a role. I was an assistant director who was asked to sit on that bike,” clarifies Vidyut, who insists his journey actually started later that year as an antagonist in Abhinay Deo’s action romance Force.Story continues below this adThanks to his striking debut, Vidyut was stereotyped as the bad guy in movies, from AR Murugadoss’ 2012 Tamil action thriller Thuppakki to Tigmanshu Dhulia’s 2013 action film Bullett Raja. It was only with Dilip Ghosh’s Commando later that year that he turned into a bankable lead action star. But Vidyut claims he’s willing to venture into negative roles even at this stage of his career, like he did with Murugadoss’ Tamil action thriller Madharaasi last year.“I normally don’t try to get out of anything I am in. I recently did Madharaasi, a Tamil movie, and I wanted to do it. I like to play all these roles, and I enjoy that part a lot too,” he says. So, even after his Hollywood debut, is he not afraid of getting pigeonholed again? “I’m not afraid. Period,” pat comes the reply. It was this devil-may-care attitude that fetched international acclaim for Vidyut in the first place, back when Commando premiered at the Fantasia International Film Festival. He was compared to the likes of action legends like Jackie Chan. “I remember the feeling, but I didn’t know what the festival was all about at that time. I wasn’t very aware,” he admits. Vidyut Jammwal and Chuck Russell on the sets of Junglee.Street Fighter is also not the first time Vidyut has collaborated with a Hollywood filmmaker. Chuck Russell, late filmmaker best known for Jim Carrey-starrer 1994 hit superhero comedy The Mask, made his Bollywood directorial debut with Junglee, an action adventure film starring Vidyut. The director told this writer back then he found it a challenge to reign in Vidyut, who was used to pushing the boundaries of action, often not paying heed to the Hollywood safety standards.“With Chuck, it was different because that was a Hindi movie. In India, you can call the shots. If we want to take a chance and we believe we can do it, actors normally like to do it. But it’s different in Street Fighter because the safety standards are so high, the laws and insurance policies are so different from us, you can’t do a lot of things impromptu. The whole mathematics is completely different from what we do,” argues the actor.Story continues below this adIt’s only this constant pushing of the envelope as an action star which has allowed him to attempt a hijack spy thriller like IB71 (2023) and India’s first extreme sports action film Crakk (2024), as both an action star and a producer. “I’m not trying to be the face of changing action in India. The desire is to excel every time from what you’ve done in the past. The desire is to surpass every limitation you thought you had in the past. That’s what drives me to do what I do,” says Vidyut. “Because I’m an army kid, I wanted to do IB71. I was intrigued by its background. And then I wanted to make an action movie which has extreme sports because I enjoy doing those extreme sports. I live those sports. So, it was an opportunity for me to work with extreme sports artists like Red Bull artists. It was incredible,” he adds.The box office failure of an ambitious film like Crakk: Jeetegaa Toh Jiyegaa led to him losing crores as a producer, which he recovered within three months by participating in a French circus. Since then, he’s put his production house Action Hero Films on hold. “I’ve parked it because my vision right now is to enhance every skill I have. I’ve taken a few months off to only concentrate on a few skills that I thought were on the backburner over the years because of the hectic life I’ve had. So, I’ve been fulfilling all of them,” he explains.Also Read — Ramayana advance booking: Ranbir Kapoor film tickets touch Rs 2,770; earns Rs 4.88 croreThe brand ambassador for India Yoga Association, Vidyut now represents India and speaks about Indian scriptures, from Patanjali Yoga Sutra to Vigyan Bhairava Tantra. “I’ve been enjoying going to colleges like the IITs and the IIMs to speak about the scientific aspect of scriptures. I recently gave a lecture at IIT Bombay on the Kañcukas, which are a part of Kashmir Shaivism. For me, to reeducate myself and take myself into the depth of this science was incredible,” he says, channeling his inner Dhalsim, as he gears up for a potential Street Fighter sequel.