Suniel Shetty has acknowledged that he made mistakes while picking films, adding that his audience is not willing to "pay for rubbish". When his children witness the love he receives from his fans, he says they wonder why he stopped acting. Suniel's children, Athiya and Ahan Shetty, are both actors in the Hindi cinema business and have appeared in a few films.
He made his acting debut in 1992 with Balwaan. Suniel never ceased acting in films, however he has recently appeared in non-Hindi films. He has worked in Tamil, Telugu, and Malayalam films over the last four years. He made multiple cameo appearances in Hindi films. He landed a full-fledged role in Sidharth Malhotra's A Gentleman in 2017.
Suniel told, “It’s been a long time. I did one off Darbar and Kannada film and Pailwaan and one of those films but that was more to test waters, to understand and see do I remember the craft even now? Have I forgotten it? Do I have an audience? Of course everywhere I go there’s tremendous amount of love that I get. It’s unbelievable.”
He added, "Even my kids say ‘Baba it’s unbelievable why did you get out?’ I said I got out probably because I made mistakes. I had an audience but they weren’t willing to pay for trash that I was giving them. And you realize that it’s only when you give churn out trash that the audience says I don’t want to pay for it.” Suniel also said that distributors did not buy his films if they did not have his action scenes. He added that they even demanded "couple of action scenes and a rain dance song" after watching rushes of his films.
Suniel Shetty most recently appeared in the web series Dharavi Bank. Following that, he has a number of intriguing films scheduled for release. Hera Pheri, the third instalment of his famous comedy franchise, is one among them. According to speculations, Suniel will co-star with Paresh Rawal in the film, although Akshay Kumar is unlikely to return for Hera Pheri 3. Akshay has stated that he will not appear in the film. Kartik Aaryan has joined the Hera Pheri 3 production team.
Suniel Shetty will co-star with Deepika Padukone, Dulquer Salmaan, and Prabhas in Nag Ashwin's Project K.
