Wish upon an acting star: Is there a Matthew in Hritik?

atthew McConaughey isn't an actor I would have thought to have such a capacity for acting in him. His beach bum good looks, heightened by his knack to appear in films which contractually oblige him to keep his shirt off for at least two scenes, didn't prepare me for his searing portrayal of Ron Woodroof, a homophobic Texan redneck stricken with AIDs in Dallas Buyers Club.

Coming with a filmography that includes feel-good movies such as The Wedding Planner, How To Lose A Guy In Ten Days and Ghosts of Girlfriends Past, he was, till Dallas Buyers Club, Hollywood's Hrithik Roshan " successful eye-candy. I have seen McConaughey play interesting roles, especially in the 2012 Jeff Nichols' film Mud where he plays the title role of a man hiding away from civilisation and building a bond with two boys who stumble on to him.

But even in these uncharacteristic non-romcoms, we find his characters skirting around the characters McConaughey is traditionally known for: a bright-eyed, fun-seeking, borderline bad boy-lady's man. I also saw the tweaked McConaughey in Martin Scorsese's howling-at-the-moon black comedy The Wolf of Wall Street where he plays Mark Hanna, the 1980s Wall Street broker-boss of the protagonist Jordan Belfort (played by Leonardo DiCaprio), whose philosophy of making easy, huge money and living on a testosterone-topped hyper-casual sex and a cocaine diet becomes the movie's raison d'etre.

In Dallas Buyers Club, with the help of director Jean-Marc Valle, McConaughey destroys our notion of Matthew McConaughey. The glad-eye blond dude has been transformed into an unpleasant, burlesque figure who faces disease and death to become something more than just a redeemed hero. As a subject, Valle's choice is challenging. It could have easily become a melodramatic and overblown tear-jerker. But it remains taut, underplayed, mixing dark and light as well as light and heavy with a chemist's precision.

ut there's a bigger departure from the old, familiar Matthew McConaughey that startles us. He has physically changed himself. This is more than about McConaughey losing 21 kg and looking sickly thin for the role. This is also about destroying the Matthew McConaughey we know to make the actor into a blank slate again. It's interesting to note that Brad Pitt and Ryan Gosling " both "beautiful men" " were also considered for Woodroof's role. Another "pretty boy" picked up the bat to beat out a great performance even as he also smashed his own Hollywood persona to bits.

After watching Dallas Buyers Club, I wonder whether there will be a similar actor taking a similar plunge in any Indian movie soon. Whenever stars have stirred themselves to make a move to become "actors", here in Bollywoodland, I have been embarrassed for them. Amitabh Bachchan in Paa or Black remains the Big H (H for histrionics) as ever; Aamir Khan, even as he discarded his Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak roots, has been a righteous public school boy doing "entertaining films with social messages" school plays; and the less said of Shah Rukh Khan's performance as an Asperger syndrome-affected Shah Rukh Khan, the better.

Indian stars and mainstream actors whose chief vehicle " as it is anywhere else " is to look good, avoid acting in great, challenging movies for three reasons: one, such a move is, well, challenging, and not being good actors they're happy to be in movies that "bring joy to millions of ordinary people". Two, such a move away from their hard-won slots could break the spell of "starhood" that they have over so many people who'd like to see them the way they are. And three, there are not that many great, challenging movies out there to be in.

Mrinal Sen used Mithun Chakraborty brilliantly in his 1976 art house film Mrigayaa (The Hunt). But Chakraborty's fabulous performance as an adivasi hunter came much before he tasted stardom in Disco Dancer to become "Mithun".

Directors have been understandably uneasy to consider big-ticket actors in their movies as the risk of a star's presence overwhelming and contaminating the film is very high. Satyajit Ray's 1966 Nayak (Hero) doesn't really count as he craftily used the Bengali superstar Uttam Kumar's star quality to make one of his lesser movies about, well, a film star. He was far more successful in using Amjad Khan and Sanjeev Kumar, both straight out of the afterglow of Sholay (1975) playing Gabbar Singh and Thakur respectively, in Shatranj ke Khilari (1977).

Off the top of my head, I can just recall Srijit Mukherji's 2011 cracker of a psychological thriller Baishe Shrabon (22nd Sravan) where Prasenjit Chatterjee, one of Bengali 1990s mainstream cinema's poster boys, gives a brilliant performance " actually "unreminding" all of us familiar with those Bengali movies of the 90s how ghastly Prasenjit was in those ghastly films.

Perhaps, there will be a time soon when a director and an actor will muster up enough courage to work together in an interesting, challenging, maybe even great movie. Who knows what acting prowess Ranbir or Hritik may have in him. Or even Salman.