Malhar Thakar

He went to Navrang School in Navrangpura and Sheth C. N. Vidyalaya in Ahmedabad, then spent nine years in Gujarati theatre before the film business had any use for him. His first screen credit, in 2012, is listed as a man at a visa office in Kevi Rite Jaish, the film usually credited with restarting urban Gujarati cinema.

That credit is worth more than it looks. He was physically present at the start of the new wave and got a few seconds of it. Everything after that is the story of a man converting a walk on part into a fourteen year working career in an industry that, at the time, could not promise anyone a second job.

Chhello Divas opened on 20 November 2015 across 231 screens worldwide and grossed a reported Rs 18 crore with a run of more than fifty days. Thakar played Vicky. The same film put Yash Soni and Janki Bodiwala on screen for the first time, which makes it less a debut than a graduating class.

Love Ni Bhavai followed in 2017, and it ran past a hundred days in theatres, which for a Gujarati release at that point was closer to an event than a statistic. Golkeri in 2020 was declared a hit. Three films in five years that each did what the industry needed at that moment, which is the sort of consistency that gets an actor booked rather than admired.

In 2018 he appeared in seven Gujarati films: Mijaaj, Vandha Vilas, Reva, Shu Thayu?, Ventilator, Sharato Lagu and Midnights with Menka. Three of those were a guest turn or a cameo. He played the funeral manager in Ventilator, a film in which he was not the point, and took a traveller's cameo in Reva. In 2022 he did six more, including Gajab Thai Gayo!, Vickida No Varghodo and Aum Mangalam Singlem.

Most actors treat a cameo as a favour and a small film as a step backwards. He treated both as inventory. The reason Gujarati cinema could release films steadily through the late 2010s is that a handful of people were willing to work at that volume, and he did more of it than anyone.

In 2018 he started his own production house, Ticket Window Entertainment. In April 2020 he announced an organisation to help people hurt by the pandemic. Then came the outside work: a supporting role in the Hindi film Maja Ma in 2022, Jee Karda for Amazon Prime Video the same year, and Ajitesh Bhatt in Netflix's Scoop in 2023.

Note the shape of that. He went to Hindi as a supporting player and came straight back to Gujarati as a lead, which is the reverse of the usual sequence. Most actors use the regional lead to buy a Hindi lead. He used a Hindi supporting part to buy nothing at all, and kept the Gujarati calendar full.

3 Ekka opened on 25 August 2023 with Thakar, Yash Soni and Mitra Gadhavi, and reportedly collected Rs 25 crore, which put it joint third on the all time Gujarati list behind Laalo and Chaal Jeevi Laiye!. It took eleven years of credits before one of his films landed on that table.

Since then the calendar has not slowed. Lagan Special, Vanilla Ice Cream and Locha Laapsi in 2024, four more releases in 2025 including All The Best Pandya and Vande Bharat Via USA, and Lagan Laagii Re in 2026. The career has no obvious peak, which is exactly the point. It has a rate.