Rajkummar Rao Reveals His Teachers Paid School Fees So He Wouldn't Be Expelled: 'We Were Scraping By'

Stree 2 star Rajkummar Rao revealed that due to financial stress in childhood, his teachers chipped in to pay his school fees. He opened up about his humble beginnings and lauded his mother for never making him feel any financial burden. He said his mother managed to give Rajkummar a regular upbringing by borrowing money for school books and tuition fees.

Rajkummar Rao reminisced about his childhood in Gurgaon on Raj Shamani’s podcast. He said he was popular as a kid and always wanted to be an actor.  He added, “I grew up in a joint family, I have two older siblings. I had humble beginnings. I didn’t grow up with money, so that financial stress was always there. It wasn’t like we were dying of hunger, but we were just about scraping by.”

However, his mother made ‘arrangements’ so he wouldn’t ‘feel’ the financial burden. He said, “For schoolbooks and tuition fees, she’d ask our relatives for help sometimes. That’s how she raised us. There was a two or three-year period where school teachers paid our fees because there were three of us and there was no money for school fees. They didn’t want us to be taken out of school, so they chipped in for us.” Rajkummar mentioned that since his siblings excelled in extracurricular activities, the teachers didn’t want them to not have a chance at proper education. “But I had a fun childhood, I was always outdoors,” he added.

Meanwhile, Rajkummar Rao is currently seen in Stree 2. The film is proving to be a box office juggernaut, showing impressive numbers in its first week of release. The film has earned a staggering Rs 275.35 crore in just seven days. Despite competition from films like Vedaa and Khel Khel Mein, Stree 2 has maintained its stronghold at the box office over the week. Besides Rajkummar Rao, the film also features Shraddha Kapoor, Aparshakti Khurana, Abhishek Banerjee and Pankaj Tripathi in key roles. Varun Dhawan and Akshay Kumar also made grand cameos in the film. Stree 2 has become the highest opener of 2024 so far, beating films like Fighter and Kalki 2898 AD.