I deserve a lot more than I got: Kamal Haasan

 

Much, much more comfortable. It’s like I’ve taken a vapour inhalation. I can breathe easy. I feel rejuvenated. I feel relaxed I now have a smile on my face and it’s showing in my films.

 

The day I start looking at acting as work I would be. Working for money or fame saps you. I stopped doing that 30 years back. 

 

Yes, some of it. I am very happy Aamir Khan is now attempting films that should’ve been done 10 years ago in Hindi. People attribute this new cinema to the entry of corporate houses in Hindi cinema. But where were these corporate houses when Hrishi Da (Hrishikesh Mukherjee) made his films, and Gulzar  Bhai made Achanak? Brilliant films are possible in every corner of India.

 

 I’m proud of her because she isn’t doing a product of our home banner Rajkamal Films. The only thing Rajkamal did for her was to give her a chance to do the background score in Unnaipol Oruvan. It 

wouldn’t matter to me if she failed as a movie actress. But right now it looks like a winning streak.

 

Shruti has been telling me that we should. But I don’t want her to do it just for the heck of it. She is a star now. I want her to act in one of our home productions for the glory of our banner. By the way, for the Tamil version of Dasavthaaram she was my coach for my American accent. She had just returned from the US and was the perfect medium to help her father’s Madrasi accent to be transformed into a Yankee accent. She was a bully. She made me do many retakes. And after the dubbing she wanted me to correct some more of my accent. Everyone thought that was taking it a little too far (laughs).

 

Every time Akshara stands behind the camera and says, ‘This is where I want to be’, I am reminded of myself. I started behind the camera and gradually moved to the front.

 

I would probably say I deserve a lot more than I’ve got. 

 

When we were still in our ’20s I had asked him why he had to be so stylised on screen. He told me that’s the secret of his future success. I assured him my style would also be a winner. He  turned around to say, ‘Fair enough. You do your thing and I’ll do my own.’ Rajini is a phenomenon too.

 

(laughs) No seriously, both of us were young actors who started from scratch. He was the bus conductor with acting aspirations. I was the clapper boy who got the clap in my very first film (Kamal Haasan played a character with venereal disease in his first adult role). We didn’t have fathers to make movies for us. But we had the same godfather, K. Balachander. It’s quite strange, but our paths as actors were always intertwined. Initially we were both typecast as villains. I got fed up of doing those and went to Kerala to do Malayalam films. Then his career as a villain took off, and I returned to Chennai to pursue a career in Tamil cinema. We made our way up together. 

 

It depends. He said if we do a film together he wouldn’t direct it. It has to be either me or someone else. It would be quite interesting to do a film with him. At the Thenali silver jubilee function, Rajini recalled an incident early in our careers when he was riding pillion on a mo’bike with me. When I sort of took a skid, Rajini asked if I knew how to ride a mo’bike. I assured him even if I fell, I wouldn’t let him fall. I was so touched when at the function Rajini said, ‘That’s what happened in our career. He never let me fall. In 1983 when I wanted to leave everything behind it was Kamal who cajoled me back to the material world’. I guess we’ll do a film together. We’ve been talking about it for five years. We’re worried about the expectations.