Bobby Deol is Back. Why Didn’t We See It Coming?

In The Ba***ds of Bollywood (2025), Aryan Khan’s self-aware Netflix debut dipped in Farah Khan’s campy maximalism, actor Bobby Deol plays Ajay Talwar, the country’s biggest superstar. His entry is a flex in understatement: man-bun, hulking frame, and slow-motion glide as photographers try to capture his every move. He doesn’t announce himself with booming dialogue. Instead, his step is steady, his eyes are careful, and the weight of the years behind him press into his posture. 

To understand why that moment landed — why Bobby Deol, at 56, now produces the kind of hysteria usually reserved for younger stars — one has to remember how improbable this resurgence once seemed. Twenty years ago, he was the leather-clad chocolate-boy of the 1990s. By the mid-2000s, all of that calcified into a liability. “I didn’t even realize when my career started slipping away,” Deol said in 2017. “One day, you’re sitting at home more than on set.” Yet now, he’s been on an acting run few could have predicted. Most think it started from Animal (2023), in which he played the protagonist’s violent cousin with no dialogue, yet stole the show. But the seeds were sown far earlier.