Abhishek Bachchan has been in the Bollywood industry for almost 18 years now and he has had his share of success and failure. Through all these years, along with the stardom and fandom that he enjoys, also came criticism. We have seen Abhishek shut down trolls on Twitter, but that doesn’t mean all the negativity didn’t take a toll on him. In an interview with director/producer Shoojit Sircar for The Telegraph, Abhishek spoke about how criticism affected him.

Abhishek said,

Very badly! It destroys me and I want it to destroy me. I would stick up my movie reviews on my bathroom mirror and highlight all the portions that said how bad I was. I would read those reviews every day and after a while, it kind of became inconvenient because my bathroom mirror was covered with reviews and I couldn’t see myself! I see my films almost every day. I am not a megalomaniac, I do it for educational purposes (laughs).

He added,

Failing publicly is humiliating and sometimes, people take pleasure in seeing you fail. I faced a lot of hardships at the beginning of my career — I would get thrown out of films, replaced, I wouldn’t be paid what was contracted. I slowly realised that it’s a business and you just have to pull up your socks and keep carrying on. And if you aren’t good enough, the next one will be.

For all the people out there thinking that everything is so easy for the actors, read this and you’ll know it isn’t.