Rajiv Surendra is getting candid about life after acting.
The actor, who played Kevin G in Mean Girls, recently reflected on his decision to take a step back from Hollywood in the years after the 2004 film's release.
"While we were shooting Mean Girls during my first year of college, I found out they were turning The Life of Pi into a film," Rajiv told GQ in an interview published Feb. 8. "I was determined to get that part. So I dropped out of college to go to the little town in India where the book takes place so that I could do some indepth research."
After preparing for a "few months" Rajiv shared that the project was put on hold, leading him to go back to college.
"I used college as an excuse," he admitted. "I'm just going to wait until they are getting Life of Pi ready and as soon as the movie is underway, if I get the part, I'll just drop out of school again.."
But his plans didn't go as expected.
The project kept getting delayed. Three months turned into a year turned into four years," Rajiv explained. "It was actually six years because of that year off. Life of Pi was attached to four different directors over the years so every time a new director [came aboard], I'd go to the library and get out all the movies they had made and research that director."
Despite his extensive preparation, in the end it the role in the 2012 film, directed by Ang Lee, ultimately went to Suraj Sharma.
"I worked really really hard to try to get this part," he recalled. "In the end, they gave it to somebody else."
Following the casting disappointment, Rajiv decided to take a break from acting, moving to Munich to work as an Au Pair—an experience that proved to be extremely transformative.
"It was a good lesson for me," he said. "You have to listen to yourself and if there's something inside telling you ‘I don't want to do this or I can't do this,' then you have to figure out what you actually want to do."
Rajiv continued, "Sometimes it doesn't make any sense because sometimes it means you are going to have no money or career wise you're going backwards. Excuse me, you paid to spend four years to get your degree and now you're washing someone's underwear? What? That doesn't really make sense on paper but that's what I needed."
Nowadays, Rajiv is back in front of the camera making DIY videos for HGTV on YouTube. And he's grateful his journey got him to where he is now.
"Overall I find the ultimate question people need to ask themselves is: 'What do I want?' And they need to come up with that answer on their own. In a very deep way," he noted. "When you figure that out, it actually is simple to achieve it but it means you have to let go of a lot of things."