Acting powerhouse Rajkummar Rao has delivered yet another nuanced and hard-to-forget performance in Amit Masukar’s brilliant satire Newton. In the September 22 release, Rao plays an upright Election Commission of India official who is determined to conduct polling in a Naxal-affected village despite numerous odds.

The year belongs to Rao, who has belted out one commendable performance after another – in Vikramaditya Motwane’s Trapped, Ashwiny Iyer Tiwari’s Bareilly Ki Barfi, Newton, and, going by advance reports, in Hansal Mehta’s Omerta. In this video interview by Astha Rawat, Rao tells Scroll.in about getting under the skin of his characters in three of his films: Mehta’s Shahid (2013) and Citylights (2014) and Trapped (2017). For Shahid, he met victims of injustice; for Citylights, he grew a moustache and pierced his ears; for Trapped, he starved, just like his character in the movie.