Prateik Babbar's a charming young chap who can act well too. And importantly he's not running the stardom race!

All and sundry could make that out in the bit part he played in the youth flick 'Jaane Tu ...ya jaane na'. He was hardly there but he made an impact. And why not?

Prateik has the super talented Smita Patil's genes after all! He's a natural actor and very different from his step siblings Juhi and Arya who have been struggling hard with no results for long!

The buzz is that Kiran Rao has finally found one of the leads for her film 'Dhobi ghaat' in him. As far as the cast is concerned, she isn't looking for big names but newcomers with good theater experience.

Now this is a movie produced by Kiran's production house Cinema 73 which functions under the Aamir Khan Productions umbrella.

It's quite known that Kiran has been trying hard to turn director for long. And she's going all out to make sure that the movie turns out to be something substantial.

After all intellectual hubby Aamir is her benchmark! So much so that though Kiran was impressed with Prateik's work in 'Jaane Tu...' she took a very long time to zero in on him as she wasn't sure whether he would fit the role or not.

The film will just have four principal characters and will be in the docudrama style. By the way, the word is that Prateik too is happy as he admires Kiran's work.

This one sure seems to be a thinking actor in the making!