The film is not preachy-it doesn't give a biased view on terrorism,' said Arunoday.

While Shruthi and Arunoday made a conscious choice of doing 'script-based' roles, Ruslaan just happened to be roped in for 'Teree Sang', Satish Kaushik's take on teenage pregnancy.

'My first movie 'Mera Pehla Pehla Pyaar' was not a commercial one and I wanted my second project to be a commercial one. When I was approached by Satish Kaushik for 'Teree Sang', I gave my nod, thinking his films are always commercial in theme and presentation. But after reading the script, I realised it was not. But I'm glad I did it,' Ruslaan said.

'The film just has a non-commercial theme, teenage pregnancy, interspersed with a love story. It has turned out to be a great learning experience for me and I've grown a lot with this role. Ultimately, it's the character that makes you a hero-not always your acting,' he said.

Another newcomer to make an unconventional entry is Gautam Rode. He plays a superstar in Ram Gopal Varma's adventure thriller 'Agyaat', which again is not a regular Hindi potboiler.

For Gautam, his choice of 'Agyaat' was a mix of three things-a 'gripping story', 'different character' and the 'way Ram Gopal Varma narrated it'.

'I took up 'Agyaat' after the way I was approached for it. Ramu approached me for the film in November. He met me for an hour and the way he narrated my character and told me about the film, I was assured it wasn't going to be a regular role,' Gautam said.

Having said that, the 31-year-old actor says he felt it was a risk doing such an offbeat film-but was confident about going ahead with it.

'I was open to taking risks. I knew it was not going to be a conventional story with 8 to 10 songs in it. All I saw was that it was a combination of a good script, a good banner and a fabulous director,' he added.

(Radhika Bhirani can be contacted at radhika.b@ians.in)