The actor has witnessed both hits and duds in his career. With his next set of movies, he hopes to be back in the game
Emraan Hashmi
His last few films were not able to sustain the Emraan Hashmi magic on screen but the actor says he never feels the heat. Right now, he is gearing up for his cricketer act on the big screen. He plays Mohammad Azharuddin in a biopic produced by Ekta Kapoor, that will go on the floors soon. The actor has already lost some weight, thanks to the aggressive training in Mumbai. Dressed in a fitted T-shirt and blue denims, he takes a sip from his protein shake as he settles down to have a chat with us on a summer afternoon. We ask him how’s his training coming along? He says “Azhar is training me and we train together pretty often. He comes to Mumbai often for this.”
Cricket has been India’s passion ever since we lifted the World Cup in 1983. We wonder if Emraan too is mad about cricket? “I used to watch a lot of cricket in my school days but somehow I stopped it. I loved sitting with the family and watching the game, especially the India-Pakistan matches. But there was something bad about cricket in the 90s and I don’t know, it kind of phased out. It wasn’t fun anymore.”
He is right. One of India’s most successful cricket captains had shamed his country and the game that gave him fame, by fixing one-day matches. Mohammad Azharuddin was banned for life by the cricket board after he admitted to taking money for throwing away matches. His marriage to Sangeeta Bijlani came to a shocking end, when reports of Azhar having an affair with Jwala Gutta surfaced. So, will the film be a tell-all? Emraan smiles, initially reluctant, but eventually gives a small teaser, “We will keep you guessing on that. He has many shades to him and it’s a tough job putting that all together in a 2-hour film. We are going to make it worth those two hours because there is so much in his life.”
Moving to his other films, his latest sci-fi flick Mr X where he plays an invisible man has just been released. He teams up with Vikram Bhatt again after Raaz 3D which was a hit. Elated with the response so far he gives his perspective. “It belongs to the genre of the invisible man. I am a big fan of Mr India. Vikram had bounced off the subject. I wanted to play this guy and I didn’t have to turn up on the sets much. But there is a different twist to the invisible concept. Not many films in the world have been made on this genre.”
The man who owns a penthouse in Bandra, got his name and fame with the erotica genre produced by his uncle Mahesh Bhatt.
But after the success of The Dirty Picture and Raaz 3D, when the industry thought his career would reach a new high, it took a drastic U-turn. Shanghai, Ek Thi Daayan, Raja Natwarlal and Ungli, all tanked at the box office one after another. With the growing competition does he feel the heat? He speaks in an assertive tone, completely zen-like, unaffected by all the Fridays that define an actor’s career. “I never feel the heat and I am always detached with the failures and successes. I think both come with equal amount of baggage. It’s an actor’s job to keep moving and not see as a fall in any way. It’s an event and it shouldn’t define you. A success can also be equally disastrous as failures, it depends how you take them.”
He has a point. Because after the super success of The Dirty Picture, nothing of him changed. He remained the same humble guy. He adds, “You won’t even see me changed after a failure. I don’t see it that way. I still feel this is the best time for me. I am being clearer with each film, which is going out. I am not a traditional actor and I take more risks than other actors. Films don’t work for their own reasons. Things don’t come together sometimes. Sometimes good films don’t work, it’s scary. One would imagine content would work but then there are other things like the film didn’t release at the right time, marketing wasn’t right, songs were not good. All this is not in the hands of the actor.”
Just then, he answers one phone call and tells the other person politely that he will call back right away.
After a pause he looks up and says something, which defines how he picks his movies. “You just take a swing at it if you like the script. Sometimes you miss the ball but if you keep standing there and keep at it, you will hit a home run.”Speaking of hitting the home run, for the biopic, whatever he will do to mould himself for the role, one thing he dare not get wrong is Azhar’s trademark use of his wrist to play the flick shot. He nods in agreement and says, “I have been practising that for a long time now. My wrist has already become sore.”
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