Art & Entertainment

'I Haven't Seen A Film In Ages'

Snapshots of the man behind the actor—his passions and influences.

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'I Haven't Seen A Film In Ages'
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The one role in the last decade that he has been proud of.
Rangeela, Lagaan, DCH, Sarfarosh, Ghulam

Great performances in the last decade.
I really loved Boman Irani in Let's Talk. That was an outstanding performance. The other performance that I loved is Pankaj Kapur as Abbaji in Maqbool.

Would he have liked to do these roles?
I would have loved to do Let's Talk. How it would have turned out had I done the role is all just a conjecture, too hypothetical. I don't think I suit the role of Abbaji but if I was given the role of Maqbool, which Irrfan did very well, I would've liked to have done it. When a role is written, it has a certain life on paper and then an actor and director blow life into the part and it becomes something else. It can go further or may not achieve what's written.

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Earliest memories of films.
Caravan, which my father produced, we saw the 16mm print every Saturday. The first woman I fell in love with was Aruna Irani. The films I grew up watching were those of Amitji and Dharmendra in the theatres, when we got video at home it was films of Dilip Kumar, directors like Mehboob Khan, Guru Dutt, Shantaram, Bimal Roy, Hrishikesh Mukherjee, Raj Kapoor.

Was cinema the formative influence?
It was more books. My parents were very conservative, they didn't encourage us to watch films. They had this misplaced belief that if they stopped us from watching films, we'd concentrate on studies. It never happened. I also played a lot of tennis, cricket, football and chess. I got so used to reading while growing up that it has stayed with me. You will find books all over my house, you will not find DVDs. I have a pathetic collection of DVDs.

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A book he read recently.
Irvin D. Yalom's When Nietzsche Wept. Winston Churchill's biography.

On books.
Cinema offers a finite interpretation. With books you can imagine the sounds, the visuals, the characters, the emotions. In the film I am limited by what the actor has performed. A movie seen of late. I haven't seen a film in ages. I feel very ashamed. What's exciting about cinema is doing it, the ability to make an audience go through so many emotions, to make them laugh and cry, to be a part of the process of story-telling, to make them get lost in the story and characters, to make them feel things, manipulating an audience in a good way. I somehow don't end up watching so many films. But strangely enough, I know all about films, I may not have seen them but I'd know what they're all about. I keep discussing cinema...

On SRK
He's a very successful actor, someone with a lot of energy and has a very strong connection with the audience and seen a lot of success.

On Lakshya, Swades.
Lakshya didn't work for me. I thought it was well shot, I thought Hrithik performed very well. But the film didn't work for me at all, I had lots of script issues with the film, emotionally it didn't satisfy me as an audience. Swades was offered to me but I didn't like the script so I didn't do it. But I haven't seen the film so I don't know how it has turned out.

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