Mumbai, March 13 -- From Jay Khanna in Jubilee to Charles Sobhraj in Black Warrant to Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru in the recently released Freedom At Midnight Season 2, Sidhant has built a body of work that speaks for itself. Each character entirely distinct, none bleeding into the other, it's the kind of range that has earned him the well-deserved moniker of shape-shifter, and a quiet but firm place among the most gifted performers of his generation.

But for all the characters he inhabits on screen, the values that shape Sidhant off it didn't come from any grand lesson or defining moment. They came from a voice at the door. Recalling his growing up years in Jammu, he shares, "This voice is my mother's and my grandmother's. Every time I used...