R Madhavan may be basking in the success of the blockbuster spy thriller franchise ‘Dhurandhar’, but the actor’s journey to stardom wasn’t without its share of hard lessons. Looking back at the early phase of his career after the success of Mani Ratnam’s ‘Alai Payuthey’, Madhavan recalled how industry insiders advised him to focus on films that would connect with audiences beyond the cities if he wanted to reach the level of superstardom enjoyed by Rajinikanth.Madhavan had shared in an interview with Brut India, “So the people who were coming to me were saying, ‘You cannot be Rajinikanth till you do films that work in the B and C centres. The villages have to accept you. Only when they call you Thalaiva will you become a South superstar. So obviously, I was getting all this data which was telling me, do films for the villages, behave like somebody from the villages, and stuff like that.”Convinced by the advice, the actor decided to take on a project that he felt ticked all the boxes. However, things did not go as planned.Recalling the film, he said, “So I accepted a film where I was playing a guy who was struggling to feed himself, who was weak, uneducated, not studying, but who had a dream of becoming a cricketer. That was the film I was doing. The film flopped so badly that the whole studio closed down after that.”While the failure was a painful experience, it eventually became one of the most valuable lessons of his career. Madhavan realised that blindly following advice, even when it appears logical, can be a mistake if one doesn’t trust their own instincts.Reflecting on that phase, he said, “So I suddenly realised that I should never become what I’ve now started calling, in Hindi, data ke tattu, which means idiots who do not know how to interpret data. Everybody has data. Your interpretation of that data, and the inferences you draw from those interpretations, will determine how successful you are.”The actor explained that the advice itself wasn’t flawed, but his understanding of it was. Instead of copying a formula that worked for others, he learned the importance of finding his own path.“So while everything they were telling me was true, what I had to do was not that. I had to interpret the data separately and make my own kind of B and C centre films. That film taught me tremendously, with a big slap on my face, what I needed to do next.”