Taapsee Or Hrithik: Who Nailed The ‘Blind’ Act?

From forgettable turns to award-worthy performances, these actors have brought visually impaired characters to life on screen in the last decade.

IMAGE: Saif Ali Khan in Haiwaan. Taapsee Pannu in Gandhari.

With Gandhari hitting Netflix on September 3 and Haiwaan arriving in theatres on September 11, it is fascinating to see two Hindi films release back-to-back featuring visually impaired protagonists.

Directed by Devashish Makhija, Gandhari stars Taapsee Pannu as a woman blinded by a tragic incident that also leads to her child’s kidnapping. The film explores how she uses her visual impairment to her advantage to track and destroy the cult responsible for the abduction.

Haiwaan, meanwhile, is a remake of the Malayalam hit Oppam, with Priyadarshan directing both versions.

If Mohanlal played the blind hero in the original, it is now Saif Ali Khan’s turn to take on the mantle. He plays a visually impaired caretaker desperately protecting a young girl from becoming the next victim of a deranged killer (played by Akshay Kumar).

It is never easy for an actor to play a visually impaired character. Get the nuances wrong, and you risk making a mockery of those living with the disability.

But when done right, it pushes actors to deliver their absolute best. We have seen some terrific turns over the years, namely Naseeruddin Shah in Sparsh (which I believe towers over them all) and Rani Mukerji in Black (and a couple more performances, we will talk ahead).

Sreeju Sudhakaran rediscovers a few performances from the past 10 years where popular actors took on visually impaired roles. Here is a look at how they fared, ranked from strictly okay to deservingly award-winning.

 

11. Sonam Kapoor in Blind (2023)

IMAGE: Sonam Kapoor in Blind.

Bless her fashion sense and outspoken attitude, but Sonam Kapoor is a limited actress who only occasionally surprises you with a great performance. Neerja is a prime example.

Blind, unfortunately, is not.

In this bland remake of the Korean thriller of the same name, she plays a visually impaired cop trying to avoid becoming the next victim of a serial killer (Purab Kohli).

Her performance is eminently forgettable. The actress never convincingly conveys the psychological turmoil of a woman caught on a psychopath’s radar. To make matters worse, the film was previously remade in Tamil as Netrikann with Nayanthara in the lead. That performance felt leagues ahead in comparison, even if it was not Nayanthara’s best.

10. Kajal Aggarwal in Do Lafzon Ki Kahani (2016)

IMAGE: Kajal Aggarwal in Do Lafzon Ki Kahani.

Directed by actor Deepak Tijori, this romantic drama follows a former boxer who falls for a visually impaired girl, eventually returning to the ring to fund her eyesight recovery operation.

It is a highly melodramatic film held together entirely by Randeep Hooda’s dependable performance. Kajal Aggarwal brings a certain sweetness to the role, though her character is written as a rather annoying chatterbox.

However, the impairment does not exactly challenge her as an actress. Much like the bland film itself, her performance fades from memory the moment the credits roll.

9. Akshay Kumar in Samrat Prithviraj (2022)

IMAGE: Akshay Kumar in Samrat Prithviraj.

The legendary tale of the famed Rajput king Prithviraj Chauhan, who valiantly stood against the might of Mohammed Ghori’s forces despite being captured and blinded, was brought to the screen by Dr Chandraprakash Dwivedi.

(A miscast) Akshay Kumar takes on the lead role with unquestionable sincerity, yet he fails to convincingly convey the pain and anguish of a man who has lost both his love and his eyesight to treachery. Simply put, you never feel him truly getting under the skin of the character.

A lot of the blame also rests on the filmmaking, as Dwivedi fails to bring any real dramatic impact to these crucial portions, going more for a nationalistic fervour rather and hoping Kumar’s star aura pulls it through (which only intermittently worked).

8. Yami Gautam in Kaabil (2017)

IMAGE: Yami Gautam in Kaabil.

Yami Gautam was lovely in Kaabil, and her performance in the Sanjay Gupta thriller left nothing to complain about.

The primary issue is that her character is written purely as a catalyst, existing solely to motivate the hero’s bloody vengeance against her assaulters. Even so, her portrayal is highly convincing, and she excels in the scenes depicting the emotional anguish of a sexual assault survivor.

However, now that we have seen Yami deliver far stronger performances in author-backed roles, it is hard to look back at this turn with the same reverence within such a strictly hero-oriented film.

7. Vikrant Massey in Aankhon Ki Gustaakhiyan (2025)

IMAGE: Vikrant Massey and Shanaya Kapoor in Aankhon Ki Gustaakhiyan.

Vikrant Massey is a solid actor. There is rarely a performance where you feel he is just winging it, even when it is about singing praises for a national leader in a propaganda song.

In this romantic drama loosely inspired by Ruskin Bond’s short story The Eyes Have It, he is quite good playing a visually impaired musician. Yet, it is another sad case of the movie utterly failing its actor.

Aankhon Ki Gustaakhiyan is a highly contrived film about a young girl (Shanaya Kapoor, in her debut) who pretends to be blind (to prep for an audition, do not ask) and strikes up a romance with an actual visually impaired person, who pretends he can see (again, just do not ask).

While Massey tries his best to bring some credibility to the part, his performance constantly falls victim to bad writing and awkward staging, that also ultimately making his character highly unlikable.

6. Sahil Vaid in Dil Bechara (2020)

IMAGE: Sushant Singh Rajput, Sanjana Sanghi and Sahil Vaid in Dil Bechara.

A remake of the Hollywood tearjerker The Fault in Our Stars, Dil Bechara was viewed in a much kinder light when it dropped straight to OTT during the pandemic because it served as Sushant Singh Rajput’s posthumous final film.

In truth, it was not a particularly well-directed film (marking Mukesh Chhabra’s directorial debut). While Sushant and Sanjana Sanghi play cancer-afflicted youngsters falling in love, Sahil Vaid plays their best friend, who suffers from glaucoma and eventually goes blind.

The tragic irony is that he dreams of becoming a filmmaker. Vaid is a criminally under-rated actor (watch out for his performances in Bank Chor and The Hunt: The Rajiv Gandhi Assassination Case), and he is quite good here, sharing a wonderful chemistry with his late co-star. He brings a bright, natural flair to his scenes, even when the movie becomes incredibly heavy-handed in tackling its dramatic beats.

5. Taapsee Pannu in Blurr (2022)

IMAGE: Taapsee Pannu in Blurr.

As mentioned earlier, Gandhari does not mark the first time Taapsee has played a visually impaired character. She did it previously, twice in the same movie, actually, in Blurr.

A remake of the Spanish horror-thriller Julia’s Eyes, the film sees Taapsee playing twin sisters, both suffering from a degenerative disease that causes blindness.

Unfortunately, and I hate to repeat this statement, while Taapsee is exceptional in the role, the film constantly lets her down. She perfectly conveys the sheer fear and vulnerability of a woman sensing an intruder while recovering from eye surgery, but the thriller wobbles wildly around her, plagued by highly illogical writing and baffling character decisions.

4. Kumud Mishra in Nazar Andaaz (2022)

IMAGE: Rajeshwari Sachdev and Kumud Mishra in Nazar Andaaz.

The wonderfully versatile Kumud Mishra took on the lead role in Vikrant Deshmukh’s highly under-rated slice-of-life dramedy. He plays a man blind from birth who embarks on a road trip with his two househelps to reconnect with memories of the past.

It is a sweet, albeit flawed, film that does not consistently maintain its winsome tone. However, its feel-good nature and the incredible performances of the three leads (Mishra, Divya Dutta and Abhishek Banerjee) easily win you over.

Mishra is truly outstanding here. He is remarkably natural in the physical mannerisms he adopts for the impairment, and he brings a deep earnestness to how his character wholeheartedly embraces his condition and in the portions that he share with the lovely Rajeshwari Sachdev. It is easily one of his finest performances to date.

3. Hrithik Roshan in Kaabil (2017)

IMAGE: Yami Gautam and Hrithik Roshan in Kaabil.

I mentioned earlier how good performances are often negatively impacted by the mediocre films surrounding them. Hrithik Roshan’s turn as the vengeful Rohan Bhatnagar is the exact opposite.

He manages to tower so high above the material that the film’s glaring faults rarely impact his performance. Hrithik is extraordinary here, playing a revenge-seeking hero who absolutely refuses to let his visual impairment act as a roadblock in hunting down his targets.

There is a fierce, admirable intensity in his performance that instantly leaves an impact. More importantly, he effortlessly elevates a rather average thriller, proving how a sharp performance can anchor an entire film. Just hearing him taunt the villain calmly on phone, ‘Aayega na? Darega toh nahi?‘, gives you the goosebumps.

2. Rajkummar Rao in Srikanth (2024)

IMAGE: Rajkummar Rao in Srikanth.

Make no mistake about it, Rajkummar Rao is exceptionally sincere and winsome playing the real-life visually impaired entrepreneur, Srikanth Bolla.

His performance is so natural that you actively try to ignore how the film itself is just an ordinary hagiography relying entirely on its lead star. In that specific aspect, the movie succeeds because Rao makes every detail of his performance feel lived-in and completely natural.

From his body language and hand gestures to his subtle facial tics, he nails it all. You feel his raw earnestness during the airport scene when he is unjustly denied a seat on a flight, and you easily buy the sharp emotional shift when he grows overly cocky about his achievements.

1. Ayushmann Khurrana in Andhadhun (2018)

IMAGE: Tabu and Ayushmann Khurrana in Andhadhun.

Even though some recent National Award wins have been highly questionable, absolutely no one batted an eyelid when Ayushmann Khurrana won for his stupendous performance in Sriram Raghavan’s black comic thriller.

It is an incredibly challenging role to pull off. Ayushmann has to play a character pretending to be blind, then shift to playing a man who is actually blinded, before ending on a highly ambiguous note that leaves the audience completely guessing about the truth.

He handles these transitions with absolute precision in his body language, doing justice to every turning point in the character’s twisted journey. It is a brilliantly layered, winning act that unquestioningly earns the top spot on this list.

Photographs curated by Manisha Kotian/Rediff