Suniel Shetty says he stopped doing films because ‘audience wasn’t willing to pay for trash’

Suniel Shetty has said that he made mistakes while picking films, adding that his audience is not willing to “pay for trash”. The actor said that when his kids get to see the love he receives from his fans, they wonder why he stopped doing movies. Suniel’s kids–daughter Athiya and son Ahan Shetty–are both actors in the Hindi film industry and have featured in a few movies.

He made his debut with Balwaan in 1992. Suniel never stopped working in films, though he has featured in non-Hindi movies of late. Over the past four years, he has worked in Tamil, Telugu and Malayalam films. He had several guest appearances in Hindi films and his last Hindi film with a full-fledged role was Sidharth Malhotra-starrer A Gentleman in 2017.

Suniel told Bollywood Bubble, “It’s been a long time. I did one off Darbar and Kannada film and Pailwaan and one of those films but that was more to test waters, to understand and see do I remember the craft even now? Have I forgotten it? Do I have an audience? Of course everywhere I go there’s tremendous amount of love that I get. It’s unbelievable.”

He added, “Even my kids say ‘Baba it’s unbelievable why did you get out?’ I said I got out probably because I made mistakes. I had an audience but they weren’t willing to pay for trash that I was giving them. And you realize that it’s only when you give churn out trash that the audience says I don’t want to pay for it.” Suniel also said that distributors did not buy his films if they did not have his action scenes, adding that they even demanded “couple of action scenes and a rain dance song” after watching rushes of his films.

Suniel Shetty was most recently seen in the web show Dharavi Bank. Next up, he has interesting films lined up for release. These include the third film in his hit comedy franchise, Hera Pheri. As per reports, Suniel will join Paresh Rawal for the film, but Akshay Kumar is not likely to be back in Hera Pheri 3. Akshay has said that he is not doing the film. Kartik Aaryan has joined the team for the third Hera Pheri film.

Nag Ashwin’s Project K will also star Suniel Shetty alongside Deepika Padukone, Dulquer Salmaan and Prabhas.