ok here's the interview, but sorry it dosen't have the pics 😭
The reluctant actor Siddharth in his maiden film magazine interview
As frames of Rang De Basanti unspool on screen, I'm tempted to anoint him the, dare I say it, urban James Dean. But, what the heck, since we are in the business of hyperboles, I go with the flow and anoint him a young rebel with a cause. But right here, right now, the very elusive Siddharth sits opposite me at a tony suburban coffee shop and asks me pointedly why I'm interviewing him. He insists that he hates interviews, that he won't talk of his marriage and alleged link-ups with Soha Ali Khan, that he doesn't want to be part of the grand celebrity circus blah, blah blah.
Ignoring his various protests, I ask him, to use teenage lingo, to chill. And then the layers of diffidence peel away. In what is perhaps his first ever interview for a film magazine, he lets down his guard. "It's like this," he avers, "The pressure of being judged every Friday is anyway too much. And it's a huge fallacy that you have to be accessible for people to want to watch you on screen or that people have to know you to connect with your films. Because I pretend for a living. What you see on screen is not what you get. So why do you want to know the truth? The further you are from the truth about who I am, the easier my job of pretending becomes."
Thus spake Zarathustra Siddharth. Okay then, a flash of that famed arrogance shines through his uber cool glares, as he continues, "I'm a terribly arrogant person. Do you know, the other day a scribe called me up and asked, 'Are you in Bangalore?' And I retorted, 'Are you in Arunachal Pradesh?' She was too taken aback. No really, why assume I would be in Bangalore? I am a Tamilian who works in Hyderabad."
For those who came in seriously late, Siddharth worked with Mani Ratnam as an assistant director on his Tamil film Kannathil Muttamittal before going on to become a major star in the South. It was a ten-minute interview with Mani Ratnam that charted the course of Siddharth's life. "As luck would have it, I cracked that," he exults. "Mani sir was my entry into cinema."
It was Mani sir who coaxed him to sign on Boys, his first film. Siddharth recalls, "He told me, 'That's your ticket to watching commercial film-making with a ringside ticket.' So I took it on. But Boys took away my faith in films. The 18-month process was a bizarre experience. I also came to terms with how bad I was as an actor. First films seldom tend to be pleasant or interesting experiences, you know," he states.
And if his first film was not such a pleasant experience, his second film Ayitha Ezhuthu (the Tamil version of Yuva) with none other than his guru Mani Ratnam was a revelation in more ways than one. Turns out that it was quite an episode for the reluctant actor. He says, "Mani sir's film was my baptism by fire. The whole fear started then. Till then, if I was afraid, I would write it off. I would rationalise it by thinking that these people don't deserve me anyway. But if I got scared with Mani sir, there was no running away. I had to conquer that fear, I had to face it."
No big deal, Mani sir gave him the assent, told him that he had done a 'decent job'. "Which was the biggest compliment he had given me in the three years that he had known me. It was a relief to know that I hadn't screwed up," Siddharth smiles for the first time in the conversation.
So did he prefer Mani the boss or Mani the director? A grin bolts across his face as he says, "There is a very funny story attached to that. I regard him as my first teacher. And the only way to really learn from Mani Ratnam is to be an actor. Because he pampers his actors, babies them. If you are an assistant, it's different. He doesn't do it intentionally but because he pushes himself so far, he really doesn't have much time for you. That's the way he works. When Mani sir offered me a role I was like, 'Wow here's my moment. Now I'll really get to learn.' The problem was I would always be an assistant to Mani sir. He didn't mollycoddle me at all. Yet, it remains one of the most memorable experiences of my life."
Wait, there are more Mani matters. "Every time he came into the room, I'd get up. Till he asked me, 'Why do you keep getting up?' And I told him, 'With all due respect sir, it's not respect, it's fear. You scare the shit out of me.'
After a pause, he continues, "Mani taught me something very important. He said, 'A lot of shit happens to people when they are making films. But in cinema, once the camera rolls, it's committed to celluloid. And you can spend the rest of your life blaming what went wrong on anything or anyone else. It can't be that someone else conspired or connived and made you do it.' I've done only five films in five years. The reason I don't do too many films is because I want to be accountable only to myself. If it's good it's me, if it's bad it's me. I don't want to apologise for the films I do. I didn't come here to make money. I came here for respect. Because this is the only thing I can do—be it acting or direction."
His idealism is almost endearing, if somewhat skewered in today's practical world. Easier said than done in the long run perhaps. That gets his goat somehow. And he retorts, "Well, there's always going to be that question isn't there? 'Oh it sounds wonderful but are you going to be able to pull it off?' If I knew the answer to that question there would be nothing more to my life. I don't know the answer to that question. I can tell you I'm going to try," Siddharth responds.
Is it this kind of idealism that drew him to his character in Rang De Basanti? I ask. Because Karan Singhania was an out and out cynic. Until things changed the way they did. Sid theorises, "The similarity between Karan Singhania and me is that we are both cynical. But if you ask Karan for a solution to a problem, he would probably smoke a cigarette
and walk away but I will try and come up with 20 different solutions."
He talks about how he signed on for the role, one that had been rejected by actors galore. "Rang De... again scared me. Because here's a guy—me—who usually gets paid obscene amounts of money to be in every frame of a film, in wonderfully colourful clothing and singing all six songs, being offered a film in which 80 per cent of the time, the character is either in the background or in shadow, profile or back shot. And has very little to say."
Except that he walked away with the limelight in the climax. He made up for all that he didn't say throughout the film. Incidentally, did he believe in the ending, since it's been the topic of much debate? "I remember asking Rakeysh Mehra during the narration, 'Are you making a cross cultural film meant for festivals or are you making a Hindi film? He said he was making a commercial Hindi film. And I was convinced,'' states Siddharth. He continues, "Anybody who has criticised the ending should put himself in the shoes of the person who has made this Rs 30 crore film. Because if the end hadn't been melodramatic, it would have been a disaster. Especially in Indian cinema, it's the last ten minutes that you carry away with you when you walk back to the car park."
His voice softens as he recalls his shooting days. "Rang De... was the best shoot of my life. I've never had so much fun ever." And here's why. "It was fun because of Rakeysh who was like an umbilical chord that I needed to access every night. Because of Binod Pradhan, the cinematographer, whom I've plagued with questions day and night and who answered them with patience. Because of Atul Kulkarni whom I respect immensely. You know, he walked into my room in the middle of the night once and asked me, 'How do you like the way I'm playing my character?' And I said, 'Let me go outside, breathe and come back because you are asking me about acting?' Because of Sharman Joshi who I think is probably the most talented young man in the country today. Because of young women like Alice Patten and Soha Ali Khan who had so much to offer. Because I got to play Bhagat Singh....," he rambles on and on.
He pauses and chuckles. "Do you know that some people said I played him like a wimp? All I want to say is that he was a 23-year-old young man, and this was the first time someone had played him like that."
And at 27, how does he want to play the field now? With his now familiar sharpness he says, "Well, if I sign a stupid Hindi film now, I'll lose what Rang de has given me. But if I do a film five years from now, and it works, they'll say that the Rang De... boy is back. I think I'd prefer that."
Ask him if he is in a mood to triple time Chennai, Hyderabad and Mumbai because the going seems to be so good and here's what comes. "I live a mongrel lifestyle. When I was in college in Delhi, I was a Madrasi and in Chennai I was a Delhi boy. When I moved to Hyderabad, I was a Chennai boy. When I came to Mumbai, I was a South star and when I went back to Hyderabad I was the Rang De Basanti hero. No one knows where I belong. Everyone wants to say I'm not available for them. But it's okay. It keeps the riff-raff away. It also keeps the shit films at bay."
A chip on his shoulder that seems to be genetically pre-ordained, a phone number that practically no one has access to and a self-assuredness that is almost unreal. But that's Siddharth for you. And no we can't attribute the 'I won't budge for the world' idealism to Howard Roark because Siddharth hasn't read The Fountainhead. ('I'll wait for the movie to be made. I'm not much of a book reader.')
So what does he want to be finally, how does he want to be known? Out pops another Siddharth-ism. "When I was younger, I'd told my father I wanted to be a film-maker, a cricketer and a singer. Nobody in the world has been all three at once. And that's why I want to do it. And that's why I've never had a role model. I've never known anyone who has done exactly what I want to do."
Clearly, he marches to his own merry beat. Something that his alter-ego Karan Singhania would approve of. And one more time reel imitates life. Minus the patricide, of course.
enjoy 😃
Edited by shaktiluver - 19 years ago
