Vicky Kaushal is an Indian actor who is best remembered for his performance in award-winning movie Masaan in 2015 for which he won the IIFA Award for Best Male Debut.

Early Life
Born in the slum area in Malad, Vicky is born on 16th May, 1988 to award-winning action director and stunt coordinator Shyam Kaushal, who has been associated with movies like Slumdog Millionaire, 3 Idiots, and Bajrangi Bhaijaan. His brother, Sunny Kaushal, is also a part of the film industry and has worked in movies like Gunday and My Friend Pinto as an assistant director.

Vicky studied electronics and telecommunications engineering at the Rajiv Gandhi Institute of Technology, Mumbai. It was only during one of the industrial visits during his engineering that he realized that he wanted to become an actor. He was always an active part of theater during his school and college days, and joined an acting workshop under Kishore Namit Kapoor but also parallelly completed his engineering.

Acting Career
Vicky first decided to assist directors instead of acting and used to regularly visit Bollywood director Anurag Kashyap`s office, after which he assisted him on Gangs of Wasseypur in 2010 and Gangs of Wasseypur 2 in 2012. After that, he went on to do do small parts in movies like Luv Shuv Tey Chicken Khurana in 2012, Bombay Velvet in 2015, and was also seen in short film Geek Out. In the meantime, he continued to be a part of Manav Kaul and Naseeruddin Shah`s theater groups.

While Vicky was assisting Kashyap on Gangs of Wasseypur, even Neeraj Ghaywan was working with him as an assistant director. When Neeraj decided to make his own movie, Masaan, he called Vicky to audition for a part too. Masaan, co-starring Richa Chadda, Sanjay Mishra, and Pankaj Tripathi, was released at the Cannes Film Festival and won the FIPRESCI Prize in the Un Certain Regard section and a `Promising Future` prize (Prix de l`avenir) for debut films. When it released in India in 2015, it opened to a positive response and received critical acclaim. Despite belonging to a typical Punjabi family, Vicky managed to play the role of a small town Banarasi boy in the movie with ease, which won him immense praise and critical acclaim.

In 2016, the actor was seen in the coming-of-age story of a young boy in Zubaan co-starring Sarah Jane Dias. In the same year, he was seen in Raman Raghav 2.0, based on a true story co-starring Nawazuddin Siddiqui, where he plays the role of a cop who is a drug addict, and is after a serial killer.

After a successful year in 2017, Vicky began the year 2018 with another stellar performance in the Indian spy thriller Raazi directed by Meghna Gulzar. The film, which is based on a novel titled Calling Sehmat by Harinder Sikka is about an Indian spy who married a Pakistani military officer before the Indo-Pak war in 1971. His other notable ventures include Sanju, a biopic on the Bollywood star Sanjay Dutt, which is directed by the acclaimed director Rajkumar Hirani and Manmarziyan, directed by Anurag Kashyap. His 2020 release includes Bhoot - Part One: The Haunted Ship. His other notable works include Sardar Udham (2021), Govinda Naam Mera (2022), Almost Pyaar with DJ Mohabbat (2023), Zara Hatke Zara Bachke (2023), The Great Indian Family (2023), Sam Bahadur (2023), Dunki (2023), Bad Newz (2024) and Chhaava (2024).