Vi segnalo l'intervista concessa da Irrfan Khan ad Anshul Chaturvedi, pubblicata oggi da The Times of India:
'You wanted to be an actor, or a star?
Star. (...) You want to be followed. You want people to follow you, to be inspired. (...)
How many people do you manage to inspire, connect to? After all, the larger proportion of cinema you do is described as niche...
Some of it is, some is not. (...) If I had some other choices, some other opportunities, it may have been different. (...) This mainstream vs niche thing, you can see it as a conflict, but I am trying to bridge it. I am also trying to do entertaining stories. I want to entertain people, but with some substance. (...)
We are the largest filmmaking nation but our movies and even our superstars don’t come within sniffing distance of critical appreciation such as the Oscars most of the time. Does our song-and-dance cinema not have the potential to cross international boundaries, like so few of our actors have? (...)
The director creates the story, he fits you there. There are so many actors who can do wonders if put into the right hands. Correct casting is critical. But it’s not their - the director’s - need. It’s my need. If I’m doing a film in two months, and it is giving me a lot of money - and then there’s a film where I am getting one-fourth of the money, and it takes 5 months of my time, but it’s a role like “The Namesake”, I’ll take that. That’s a choice I have to make. But why that work came to me in the first place - whether “The Namesake” or others – I cannot decipher that. I am incapable and too limited to be able to really understand that.
Is the pace fast enough? Your friends have said that you may do at 50 what others do at 40, and that sort of thing.
I have made peace with it, because I have no control over it. I want to have peace. I want to enjoy. Life is too short, the period for which we are here.
Danny Boyle said you have “an instinctive way of finding the moral centre of any character”. (...)
There was a moral justification for the character’s actions, which was not there in the script. (...) And Danny could see what I was doing. I think that’s why he said that. They are very sharp people. And Danny is perhaps the sharpest person I have met. Very healthy, psychologically, very powerful.
How’s it to get something like a Padma Shri?
It’s not a thing, please, it’s an honour. (...) It is something I cherish and I really felt good about it. My mother-in-law cried when she heard the news; I don’t think she’ll cry if I win an Oscar. (...) You are used to being talked about only in terms of box office returns and lead role vs character artiste and all that, and in the middle of it all, when this comes, unexpectedly, you feel that your work is being acknowledged, that what you are doing is reaching somewhere.
This acknowledgment of work - what’s the turning point of your life when this became your chosen track?
My deciding to go to NSD [National School of Drama], and then my father’s passing away, it all suddenly being thrust on to me - the social expectation, your father is dead, you are 21, you should stay and take care of the family... That was a very complex point of time. My father’s business was almost zero, I had to choose whether I stayed back and revived it and took care of the family, or I continued with my NSD track. There was a lot of pressure... (...)
You say your Western projects get you one-fourth the money you could make in masala cinema here. You’re not very young. Doesn’t it tempt you to change your choices, to use time while it’s there to park that Ferrari in your garage?
Ferrari (...) is just an additional thing in your life. What’s really important? (...) At first you look for recognition. Once you achieve it, there’s the wish to have more than to just be recognized - to share. That’s the basic need then, to share with others. (...)
You’re quite philosophical; how religious are you?
I am very religious, but not in a conventional sense. I think about God and about creation all the time. I have a cynical approach, I have a loving approach, I have no one way to follow - I have to find my own way to connect to Him. You don’t have to follow some set rules. I think it’s the biggest mystery for every human being to understand how come he’s here, how will he go; it’s a phenomena we all keep trying to understand. (...)
Any role in any movie that you saw and said, I wish I’d done this? (...)
The original “Devdas”. And perhaps De Niro’s role in “The King Of Comedy”. “Raging Bull”. I am otherwise very detached about roles, even my own. At this stage of my life, I don’t desire for any roles. But I thought Pan Singh’s role was a very rare one... I have never connected with my heart to any role - with the exception of Pan Singh’s (in “Paan Singh Tomar”, his latest film).
Doesn’t an excessive involvement with the character drain you out as an actor, being overly involved, rather than clinical, doing the movie and being done with it?
I am also very clinical. If someone comes and begins to talk about the initial and the collections and box office figures of the movie, if they start talking in a materialistic way - I’ll cut. I’ll immediately be very clinical. It matters, but what I felt while portraying the character - I won’t mix it with all that. (...)
Bhansali made a point recently that our taste is diminishing, collectively, in the art we consume, which is why audiences don’t appreciate a lot of fine work. Your take?
So, in a way, he’s calling his work classy...? (...) But the world moves along a track, and everything also has contrasts. If the USA is highly materialistic, spiritualism will also be more intense because it is a major need. In India, where it is taken for granted that we will all be spiritual, it is dead. Yes, there is a lot of trash being thrown at you, there is vulgarization, trying to get attention at whatever cost. People have to make money. That’s what the media is also doing - but somewhere in those pages also you find a small article which makes you stop and read and think. That’s also a reality.
Some months back (...) you spoke of fame being a disease, that to long for fame is a complex, and that to seek fame means something is lacking in your personality. And you concluded it with, “I was mesmerised by fame. Once or twice in my childhood, I went to see a shooting, and I got disturbed, because you are like nobody there. I never wanted to be a nobody”...
That’s true. I still remember it. “Ganga Ki Saugand”. (...) I was 10 or 12 years old at max. (...) I did not feel like getting an autograph, getting a photo. (...) Fame is more of a cage. Maybe I’m cynical about it. I prefer to use the word acknowledgment. To want to be famous for the sake of it, for being popular, being known - that’s a disease. I like being acknowledged. I like being connected. But to see myself seeking fame for the sake of it at the end of my life, doesn’t give me a nice feeling. I don’t want to see myself like that. I want to be in a situation where I have no fame, and I am perfectly fine with myself. What will I do about the sharing then, I don’t know. I am still to fully decipher acknowledgement. I have seen people breaking glasses and windows for me...
It’s odd, or does it give you a kick?
At that time, it feels good. I was also a little shocked - oh, am I that popular? But now I can see why somebody wanted a photograph, why somebody ran a kilometer and a half with my car just so he could shake hands with me. Is it my celebrity status, or is it something I have done to him? You can make out. You can see in the smile, in the way somebody comes to you. That is something I like - connection'.
