After breaking out onto the scene with Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na and Dhobi Ghat, Prateik Babbar started fading away and faced a slump in his career. His last release was in 2013 – Issaq – and, since then, Prateik has laid low. Now, the actor has returned, and in a tell-all interview to Bombay Times, he revealed that he was depressed, heartbroken after his failed relationship with Amy Jackson, and dealing with the terrible loss of his grandmother.
Here are a few things he said:
On losing his grandmom…
The whole process of losing her was terribly painful. She has given me immense love and all I wanted to do was make her proud, and make her part of my success. I couldn’t live up to it and that made me very angry. I was full of self-pity and was dodged with questions about my life. I wondered why people liked me. Was it because my mother had died? Did they feel bad for me?
On Amy Jackson…
I didn’t know what to do with myself after I broke up with Amy. It left a void in my life. I am not so good with heartbreak. It is not like I wanted a partner, it is more like I needed one. People around me told me that I was trying to fill a void of a female figure in my life, as I didn’t have a mother, and was raised by my grandmom who was so much older.
On drugs…
I turned to drugs at a very young age and at 19, I came out of rehab. All that I was going through emotionally led me to that. I was stupid and rebellious. In the last three years I wasn’t in rehab, but yes, I did do drugs. My depression, my failed relationship and losing the person that mattered to me the most (grandmom) — it all broke me.
He now says that he’s back, has repaired his relationship with his family (he earlier wanted to go only by ‘Prateik’ as he was cutting ties with his dad, Raj Babbar), and has studied method acting. There’s a lot more that he’s revealed about his life, so if you’re interested in the full story, read the interview here – it’s a pretty interesting look into his life.