The actor stunned reporters with the feat before comparing Hollywood set discipline to Bollywood's at the teaser launch for his Dhalsim debut.
Vidyut Jammwal turned a routine teaser launch into something else entirely on Sunday. At the event unveiling new footage of his Hollywood debut as Dhalsim in Street Fighter, he held his breath for 16 minutes in front of the assembled media, according to Bollywood Hungama. Tears ran down his face as the minutes ticked past. He didn't flinch. He finished the feat and moved straight into questions.
One of those questions was about the gap between working in Mumbai and working on a Hollywood set. Vidyut didn't hold back there either.
"Out there, I saw discipline like never before," he said, describing a shoot with 300 people on set, all sticking to the clock. "Any big actor, be it 50 Cent or Jason Momoa or Cody Rhodes, they don't know the meaning of being late. You are on a contract and so you have to be on the set at 10 am. There's no such thing as 'Main late ho gaya'. They don't know about it. And if someone is one minute late, they call you and ask you, 'Are you in the hospital?'!"
It's the kind of line that travels fast, and it already has.
He went further on the business side of it too. "The laws are so strict. Every technician is paid for every minute of overtime. Technicians wait karte hain overtime karne ke liye!" Vidyut said, adding that Indian productions are getting there but aren't quite at that level yet. "We are following the rules and laws, but we can get better. We can change a little bit."
Nobody asked him to soften it, and he didn't.
The actor was also asked about artificial intelligence, a subject that's become a standard press-event question for anyone with a film releasing in the next six months. Vidyut's answer leaned optimistic rather than wary. "Yes, we do use it and we should use it. I get very excited when I see youngsters completely involved in AI," he said. "It proves that our future will be bright."
The breath-holding stunt wasn't an isolated stage trick either. Vidyut has spoken before about wanting people to attempt his stunts themselves, saying he learned by copying others and wants the same cycle to continue. It fits a pattern with him, really, turn up to promote a film and leave with a story that has nothing to do with the plot.
As for Street Fighter itself, the teaser gave fans their first real look at Vidyut's Dhalsim, a character built almost entirely around breath control and flexibility in the games, which makes Sunday's stunt feel less like a stunt and more like a pitch. The film opens in English, Hindi, Tamil and Telugu on October 16, and between now and then, expect more of these clips to do the rounds, out of context and perfectly happy to be.
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