Many times, we tend to forget that the actors we see in movies have a life beyond that and have their own sorrows and happinesses. The audience quite frequently gets engulfed by the characters these actors portray on screen and misses out on the struggles that the actors endure behind the scenes, in real life. For Emraan Hashmi, it was not any different; he had built an image of himself, but one fine day, life delivered him something that was completely out of the script. The actor recently opened up about perhaps the most difficult phase in his life, when his son Ayaan got diagnosed with cancer.
In a conversation with Ranveer Allahbadia, Emraan looked back at how the experience continues to shape him profoundly, stripping away the spotlight and leaving behind the reality of a parent grappling with fear, resilience, and unconditional love. He shared how his life changed in the blink of an eye.
The actor, recalling how every aspect of life transformed in the blink of an eye, mentioned, "The most difficult phase of my life was when my son fell ill in 2014. And I can't even express it in words what that phase was. It went on for 5 years. My life changed in one afternoon. On 13th January, we had gone for brunch. We were eating pizza with my son. The first symptom was rubbed on that table. He passed blood in his urine. In the next 3 hours, we were in a doctor's clinic. The doctor said that your son has cancer. You have to get him operated in O.T. the next day. And then you have to undergo chemotherapy. So my whole world flipped in a matter of 12 hours."
The diagnosis came in without any heads-up, leaving no time for both Emraan and his wife to process things. There were no early signs or gradual realisations, life simply split into two stark moments, everything as it was before, and everything that followed after.
Emraan revealed that the very timing of his son, Ayaan, being diagnosed made it even more difficult to cope with and devastating. He said, "You can say that there is a high point in your life. And it felt like I've got it now. I've got my grip on life. Then suddenly you get a kick in the face. It happens."
The years that followed were marked by endless hospital visits, medical routines and an underlying sense of fear that never quite left. That difficult journey eventually inspired Emraan to put his experience into words, writing a book to offer comfort and strength to parents walking a similar path. Now, with his son on the road to recovery, Emraan looks back at those years as incredibly painful, yet life-altering in many ways that reshaped him forever.
In terms of work, Emraan is being appreciated far and wide for his role in Taskaree: The Smuggler's Web and also for Haq, which also stars Yami Gautam.
