karadi

Crossover cinema doesn’t exist in India... What is called crossover cinema is made by Indians who have settled abroad. They’re not Indian.

Their identity is different and they have different sensibilities. And I don’t see their kind of cinema coming out of India. But this is an interesting time and we’re making good, original cinema. There might be something in the next few years.

I’d love to do theatre again... but I need to find the time and the right script. And I don’t want to get bored. When you do theatre, you live with the script for months; you do the same thing again and again and you lose that connection with the script. I’m leaving for London soon and will be doing something that’s a convergence of cinema and theatre. Different actors from different parts of the world — England, Japan, France, America and Sweden — will be reading the same piece of poetry that will be filmed by the director and cut with visuals. I’m on the lookout for such projects that compel me.

Indian stars can’t cross over to the west... because they’re always playing themselves. Our stars are popular abroad, but only among the Indians living there. Americans and Europeans aren’t compelled to watch these movies unless they’re film buffs. But character actors — like Om Puri and Naseeruddin Shah — can cross over because they’re not playing themselves.

I make a conscious attempt not to get typecast... and have been doing that since my TV days. I want to keep my work exciting. If I start doing the same thing, I get bored and that’s when acting becomes torture and suffocating for me. So I do different characters, different stories and work with different people. I get offered so many of the same roles — villains, negative roles with positive shades, positive roles with negative shades, humour. You have to pick and choose and that keeps you engaged and versatile.

In western cinema, you deal with the story... not just the role. You’re important in the process of shaping the story. And the directors are non-interfering and very respectful to actors. They see what they want at the time of casting and let you be after that. And I get to do more serious cinema there, which I don’t get to do here.

Multi-starrers can be a pain... if the director forgets the story and does injustice to the film by only focusing on the images of the actors. But when the focus is on the story, they can be fun. Krazzy 4, from what I have heard, has done good business. I don’t want people to say, ‘The film was bad, but Irrfan was good.’ I wouldn’t even mind if they said that the film was good, the business was good and Irrfan was bad!

A filmi award, a National Award or an Oscar? Definitely an Oscar. Every award is about hype, nothing else. Even the National Award is not what it used to be because there is a good deal of lobbying for it. If you had asked me five years ago what I would have wanted, I would have said a National Award, but not anymore. But it’s all the same now and I might as well aim for the most hyped of them all.