Gauransh Sharma auditioned at 5 and landed a role written for a 10-year-old

Gauransh Sharma was five years old when he auditioned for a role meant for a ten-year-old. He got it anyway. The daily soap Mariam Khan Reporting Live on Star Plus locked him in the very next day, and the little boy from Agra who had quietly learned dance by watching his elder sister suddenly had a shooting schedule. Six years and a scrapbook of credits later Shamshera with Ranbir Kapoor and Sanjay Dutt, Sirf Ek Bandaa Kaafi Hai with Manoj Bajpayee, an IPL hosting stint where he interviewed Varun Dhawan and Alia Bhatt at age five- Gauransh is doing something most child actors never pull off: he’s keeping his head firmly in Agra while his career keeps happening somewhere else.

A boy who learned to dance by watching his sister

Gauransh’s story doesn’t start with a casting call. It starts in his own living room.

His elder sister danced not casually, properly, the kind of dance that gets you a world record. He watched her for long enough that he started trying the moves himself. Nobody taught him formally. He just picked it up by copying her, step by step, in the way kids do when they’re quietly in love with something.

His parents noticed. One day they signed him up for auditions for Super Dancer Chapter 2, and he kept clearing round after round, all the way to the Mega Round — Top 30. He didn’t win the show. But at that age, standing in a Top 30 on national television isn’t losing. It’s a signal.

The signal said: this kid will be fine on camera.

The audition that was never supposed to be his

Not long after Super Dancer, his father took him to Mumbai again this time for a Dance India Dance audition.

They were walking out when a man standing in the lane outside stopped them. He said he was a casting director, and he had been watching Gauransh for the last few minutes mess around with his sister and his father, completely unselfconscious. He asked, politely, whether Gauransh could audition for a show he was casting.

Gauransh’s father was cautious Mumbai has a specific kind of trap people set up for parents like him but something about the man checked out. A couple of calls later, the audition was on. A long script arrived. Gauransh had never done anything like it. His mother and father sat with him and took him through every line.

He went in. The whole team sat upstairs watching. He finished. They locked him by the next morning.

The show was Mariam Khan Reporting Live. Star Plus daily soap. The role was written for a 10-to-12-year-old who could believably sit in a Class 4 classroom.

Gauransh was five.

Shamshera, lady fingers, and a Sanjay Dutt who hadn’t actually ordered any

His first film was Shamshera. Opposite Ranbir Kapoor. Across Sanjay Dutt. A set full of veterans who could have easily made a child invisible if they wanted to.

They didn’t. They pampered him.

The story Gauransh still tells first about that film is a lunch-break story. His grandmother had come to visit the set that day, and the household had sent food along for the crew. Someone misheard who Sanjay Dutt had told to bring food for whom — somewhere in the chaos, a plate of homemade lady fingers landed in front of Sanjay Dutt. He laughed and ate.

Later that same break, Gauransh polite in the way five-year-olds who know they’re on a film set are walked up to Sanjay with the bowl of popcorn he had been snacking on, and offered him a share. Sanjay burst out laughing. “Tu mera pet kharab karega. Itne bade actor ka pet tu kharab karega?”

That became one of Gauransh’s favourite memories. Not the fame. Not the applause. The joke in the middle of a working day, from a man he’d only ever seen on television.

Ice cream with Manoj Bajpayee

The next memory he reaches for is from Sirf Ek Bandaa Kaafi Hai, where he played Manoj Bajpayee’s son.

The two of them became friends in the way that kids and generous adults sometimes do no pretence, no distance, no rank. Manoj kept telling him, “Jaldi se khatam kar le, doosri aa jayegi” finish your ice cream quickly, there will be another one for you. By the end of shoot, Gauransh wasn’t sure whether he had been working or just visiting a very fun relative.

“Woh set pe sab bahut pamper karte the,” he says. “Bahut, bahut, bahut.”

The IPL hosting job he did at five

In 2019, Gauransh hosted the IPL. He was five.

The schedule was serious rehearsals every day of the week, shoots only on Saturday and Sunday, scripts to memorise, stage marks to hit. All the other hosts were kids too, so a lot of it felt like a very elaborate playdate. Food was ordered in. Everyone made friends. The grown-ups treated him like a grown-up.

In those two days of shooting, he interviewed Varun Dhawan (who turned out to be his favourite actor at the time he had met him once before at Super Dancer, so this was round two), Alia Bhatt (who played a game with him on camera and gave him a “happy kiss” on the cheek “star nahi lagi, bilkul normal thi”), Sunny Deol (who waved at him from behind the camera between shots, which cracked them both up), Sonakshi Sinha and Irfan Pathan.

He was five years old doing this.

The schoolwork nobody warns you about

Being a child actor sounds like it skips school. It doesn’t. It just moves it around.

When Gauransh is between takes, his father teaches him. He studies in the makeup chair, in the van, in the trailer. If there’s a day with no shoot, that’s the day the real school syllabus gets covered. It doesn’t feel hard to him, he says — it just feels like life.

The other thing it moves around is time with his mother. His father usually travels with him for shoots; his mother stays back in Agra. On occasions and festivals, she comes to wherever he is. The rest of the time, they talk on calls. “Mujhe difficulty nahi lagti,” he shrugs. “Sab maze maze mein ho jaata hai.”

The one thing both his parents are completely clear about, and he is completely clear about, is that they are the reason any of this is possible. “Industry mein agar aao, toh sabse zyada zaroori parents ka support hi hai. Akele toh survive bhi nahi kar sakte.”

Why he still thinks Agra is best

Ask him if he wants to leave Agra for Mumbai permanently, and the answer is immediate.

“Nahi.”

Mumbai is where the work is. Mumbai is where the chaos and the adrenaline live. He likes it when he’s there. But every time the shoot wraps and the car heads back, there’s a specific feeling that comes back only when he lands in Agra. The feeling of his own house.

For a child actor who has already shared frames with Ranbir Kapoor, Sanjay Dutt, Manoj Bajpayee, Varun Dhawan and Alia Bhatt that answer is the actual story. It’s also the thing most people lose on the way up, if they ever had it to begin with.

The actor he’s still waiting to work with

Every time he’s asked, he says the same name. Akshay Kumar.

Not because of the fame. Because of the schedule. “Woh paanch baje uthte hain, nau baje so jaate hain, diet tight follow karte hain” — a six-year-old reeling off a thirty-year-old’s lifestyle like it’s a frontier he intends to reach. He also loves Akshay’s comic timing. “Expressions ekdum natural lagte hain. Na bahut kam, na bahut zyada. Perfect hoti hai.”

The dream, when he’s asked for one, is one project with Akshay. He doesn’t elaborate on which project. He just wants to be in a scene with him.

What he’d say to another kid who wants to do what he does

He gets this question a lot. His answer is unexpectedly tidy for someone his age.

“Target clear rakho. Distract mat ho distractions bahut aati hain. Hard work karte raho. Start karo chhote-chhote shows se, school plays se. Phir auditions dena. Phir aage aapko khud hi aata jaata hai.”

That is the whole career plan. He laid it out between a question about Stree (first part is better, he insists) and a question about his favourite food in Agra (white sauce pasta from a place called Master Chef).

He didn’t rush any of this. He didn’t fight for any of this. He just kept quietly being ready, and the next thing kept finding him. For a six-year-old, that’s as close to a philosophy as you’d want anyone to have.