Siddharth was at his candid best during his Gollapudi Srinivas Memorial Lecture in Chennai which he prefers to call only a ‘talk’, as he doesn’t take himself serious enough to give a lecture.
In his career of 25 films, he has worked with 14 debutant directors. And as the audience welcomed the dashing actor, he started to recount his early days in the film industry — his role as the assistant director to ace Mani Ratnam.
“I got to watch from very close quarters, one of India’s finest directors — he taught me everything I know. However, this didn’t work out very well for my boss, Mr. Mani Ratnam,” he said, and observed that probably Mani could give a lecture about his tryst with overconfident, amateurish, and outspoken youngsters with Siddharth in a starring role!
Sid said that he has, in a way, become a poster child for debutante directors — both as an actor and a producer, and quipped that he started out as an assistant director in the industry with an eye on his boss’s (Mani’s) job.
As he proceeded to explain the intricacies of the relationship between a director, producer, actor, distributor, the media and the audience — he confessed to have learnt more while working with debutant directors than the experienced one.
He said, “As a self-confessed drama queen, in my solitary moments, I imagine of having had a role in Gollapudi Srinivas’s first movie. He will remain our favourite debutante director.”
