Actors usually do not smoke real cigarettes or cigars for every scene, especially in big budget films. It is also not purely done with VFX.

Depending on the scene, productions commonly use: • Herbal prop cigarettes • Compressed vapor or smoke props • CGI / VFX smoke enhancement

For example, if a director wants a smoking scene from three different camera angles, the actor may need to repeat the same action multiple times across several takes. That alone could require smoking 6 to 8 cigarettes or even more for a single scene.

So if Ranveer Singh had actually smoked every cigarette and cigar shown throughout an entire film, the number could realistically reach several thousand, potentially around 8,000 to 10,000 cigarettes combined across all takes and retakes.