Posted:
Read this, its pretty nice. And seems like everything's ok in saifeena world (though he hates that name 😆 )
He's Got The Hits
Text by RAJA SEN and Photographs by JOY DATTA
Saif Ali Khan, all sharp-nosed studliness and overpowering sex appeal, is the owner of the 'thinking woman's sex symbol' title — not least because of that ever-present smirk, a slight curling up of the upper-lip toward the left, diametrically matched by a symmetric raising of the right eyebrow. It's a smirk that runs through more than his face, reaching out through his bizarre, constantly evolving filmography and the way he acts with disarming candour towards the press, even when it viciously digs into his personal life. It's a smirk that cocks a snoot at Hindi cinema, at convention, and even at himself, suggesting self-deprecation and wit and, most crucially, the air of not taking the Bollywood circus seriously at all.
And it's a smirk that looks great alongside success.
Now 37, Khan strongly resides in that exclusive Bollywood A-list coterie, the group of six to seven actors who have enough box-office clout. Investors who buy music, satellite, television and Internet rights are confident enough that his face on a poster will guarantee them their returns. And it does.
The year is four months old, and the Khan-starrer Race is a blockbuster, with an opening weekend nearly rivalling Shah Rukh Khan's overpowering 2007 smash, Om Shanti Om. Unfortunately his second release this year, Yash Raj Films production Tashan has proved to be a disaster. But it doesn't take away from his standing as an actor who can draw in audiences.
"It feels important and... nice," says Khan, when asked how much box-office success means to him. "It's a commercial business and it's good to know that you're considered saleable, dependable and bankable. It's comforting." He agrees he has taken numerous cinematic missteps over the years, faulty decisions that haven't led to much. "But mistakes can often be surprising. They throw you off a curve you don't expect."
Superstardom hasn't come easy. Initially derided as just another squeay-voiced star kid, Khan could never quite breach the Bollywood wall despite valiant attempts through the 1990s. "Somehow I think he never got his kind of movies," Sriram Raghavan, the director who first tapped into Khan's potential-filled dark side with Ek Hasina Thi, said in an interview. "He's a certain kind of guy and if you stuck him in a Hindi movie, the ones that were popular 10 years back, he always looked like a misfit. He would be mouthing dialogues in a certain way. There was something very intelligent and urbane about Saif." Try as he might, the sophisticated 'dude' couldn't ever really handle the formulaic assembly-line productions of the 1990s.
It wasn't till 2001, when Farhan Akhtar's Dil Chahta Hai broke through, that the audiences discovered the actor as he wanted to be, chilled out and for real. Also Bollywood — edgier, smarter and more given to subtler cinema — has evolved into an industry where Khan fits perfectly.
Tashan might not have created a splash at the box office, but Khan calls it a new age Bollywood film, the kind he is comfortable working in. "It's a fun commercial film. It's constantly slick and very, very stylish," he says. The actor plays Jimmy Cliff, a wannabe Yank whose real name is Jeetendra Kumar Makhwana. He's a hardcore flirt who gives English lessons at a call-centre.
Khan reacts to scripts on instinct, listening to the voice in his head to decide. "When I read a script, I think of whether it's a film that I would like to go to theatres to see or not. It's all about impulse. It's all vibe, you know?" So does he sit back on random evenings and watch reruns of his flicks on cable TV, or even pop a DVD in and smile at his own work? "Funnily enough, I've never done that. Never. It's crazy, and you're right, that's always been my criteria. But still... I will, though. Totally. I'll sit back and give Omkara the home theatre treatment. I should, na?"
And why not? Omkara, quite possibly the defining performance of his career, required his unruffled-silk urbanity to be buried beneath thick and ugly layers of grime. Shakespeare-lover Vishal Bhardwaj was convinced that Khan would make a perfect Iago. "Saif's job was a nightmare," Bhardwaj says, talking about how he loaded up the actor with localised idioms and expressions, and how khan had to start behaving like that unseemly, iconic Langda Tyagi in real life as well. "My own unit members were scared about how he would do the role. To go from a very urban, lover-boy image to that of a hardcore, creepy criminal... but I was always convinced Saif would do a great job."
Shaving off his head and going repulsively de-glam wasn't easy, and Khan calls it a brave decision — simply because mother Sharmila Tagore, one of Satyajit Ray's favourite actresses, was completely against it. "That made it a special, brave decision for me, the fact that I wanted this intense role and that my mother wasn't as convinced as I was." The result was an acting masterclass, a role that made critics strive for hyperbolic adjectives and finally make peace with the fact that Khan won the National Award a year back for 2004's Hum Tum.
Asked which films he feels have shaped his career, he splits them into three kinds — he starts "obviously" with Omkara, then accords prominent importance to "the Salaam Namaste, Hum Tum genre, which are casual, persona roles that let me be pretty much who I am without deep preparation" and finally, he tosses up a third. "Race. I mean the sheer numbers of that film have been massive. It's been the widest release I've ever got, and that opening weekend did give me a heady feeling. And it's what makes you a 'bankable star', you know?"
Being a star, of course, comes with its share of paparazzi. Khan's relationships have always made the headlines, be it with ex-wife Amrita Singh, Rosa Catalano or current flame and — of course — India's number one leading lady, Kareena Kapoor. "Well, it does often get a bit too boring. Where we ate Chinese food, what her diet plan is... So much of the press gets a kick out of 'Saif and Kareena this, Saif and Kareena that...'," he trails off, before breaking into a laugh. "But that's their job, I guess. It's cool."
Khan and Kapoor have also been remarkably blas with the press, announcing minus nonsense that they are seeing each other. "I think that had to be done, because it's a question of respectability. Pretending there's nothing going on is stupid and disrespectful towards the press. Plus, I also wanted to make it clear from the start that this is something we're both serious about, not just a passing fancy. I think the media's been great about it too. They respect the fact that we've been upfront. And I want to be frank about the fact that my intentions are honourable."
He laughs again when talking about the tattoo, the 'Kareena' emblazoned in Devnagri across his arm and — while admitting the idea wasn't his — says it was something he'd always been interested in. "And coming when it did in my life, it symbolised a lot of things. It's very personal. This has been a relationship with a lot of firsts and the tattoo was another." So are we talking permanence? "Well, we intend to, don't we? The tattoo isn't for the press or for anyone else at all, but perhaps it makes the statement that what we have isn't casual. It isn't a public declaration at all, but we have nothing to hide."
Right now, Khan is relaxed. He takes a month off for every film he does and he has two free months on his hands, months when he'll get to pick up and play with the brand new Gibson lying a few feet away. The actor enjoys rocking, be it with established rock band Parikrama or in his own house, and the guitar really lets him unwind. "He would often sit on the sets like it was a campfire," says Boman Irani, who acted with Saif in Darna Mana Hai, Eklavya and Being Cyrus. "He'd play us something, hang with the assistant directors and technicians, and he'd be very chilled out. He's a fun guy. But even when talking about movies or classic rock, he'll keep interrupting himself to bring up the scene we'll do next, or something about our characters. Which is a great sign, because you realise he's really internalising his roles."
During down-time, Khan has recently started going to the movies, which he didn't do too much of earlier. "I haven't watched that much current Hindi cinema, but now I see quite a bit of it. Kareena is more keen, so she takes me along. And watching a film you aren't a part of at a time when you aren't working is a really relaxing experience." I ask which of his films are his kids' favourites, and he calls out to daughter Sara (Race!) and son Ebrahim (Tashan!) and laughs at their responses. "I think they just have shorter attention spans, and Ebrahim's just biased because he's in Tashan."
Alongside the commercially viable hubbub, however, Khan's started his own production firm named Illuminati, focusing on making edgy, interesting cinema. The first three productions are a wild mix: Jab We Met director Imtiaz Ali's helming a romantic drama, a genre virtually dead in current romcom-friendly Bollywood; Raghavan's making an action thriller called Agent Vinod, a spy movie with the heart of the 1970s transposed into the present day; and buddy Homi Adajania is writing the script for a Western that has Khan virtually drooling. "It's a Western set post-1857, with bad boys and bad girls. Oh, and treasure." Nice.
Quite the line-up. "It's not that I prefer darker roles," he begins, before correcting himself and admitting he actually does. "Maybe it is just because they're darker, but I find those characters more realistic. They aren't all goody two-shoes, they have a seamier side to them, which makes the process of playing those characters unpredictable. They aren't conventional and as an actor, flaws are always fun to explore." And then he launches into dreams of making a Tim Burtonesque film like Sleepy Hollow, something dark and grisly and wildly funny, a folk tale populated by ghosts. "India needs a film like that. And we're gonna make it."
At one point, we talk briefly about celebrity pair-names, like Brangelina and Abhiwarya, and Khan — who frequently Googles himself to see what is being written about him — is instantly curious about what names have been coined thus far for the two of them. I toss up the two most popular ones, KareLi and Saifina, and he laughs for a minute before giving both options the boot. "I think neither of them really works. I mean, one just sounds like a gross vegetable, and the other, quite frankly, is pretty gay."
😆
Fair enough. Try harder, pressmen, paparazzi, gossip-bloggers — this guy's game for ya.
He's Got The Hits
Text by RAJA SEN and Photographs by JOY DATTA
Saif Ali Khan, all sharp-nosed studliness and overpowering sex appeal, is the owner of the 'thinking woman's sex symbol' title — not least because of that ever-present smirk, a slight curling up of the upper-lip toward the left, diametrically matched by a symmetric raising of the right eyebrow. It's a smirk that runs through more than his face, reaching out through his bizarre, constantly evolving filmography and the way he acts with disarming candour towards the press, even when it viciously digs into his personal life. It's a smirk that cocks a snoot at Hindi cinema, at convention, and even at himself, suggesting self-deprecation and wit and, most crucially, the air of not taking the Bollywood circus seriously at all.
And it's a smirk that looks great alongside success.
Now 37, Khan strongly resides in that exclusive Bollywood A-list coterie, the group of six to seven actors who have enough box-office clout. Investors who buy music, satellite, television and Internet rights are confident enough that his face on a poster will guarantee them their returns. And it does.
The year is four months old, and the Khan-starrer Race is a blockbuster, with an opening weekend nearly rivalling Shah Rukh Khan's overpowering 2007 smash, Om Shanti Om. Unfortunately his second release this year, Yash Raj Films production Tashan has proved to be a disaster. But it doesn't take away from his standing as an actor who can draw in audiences.
"It feels important and... nice," says Khan, when asked how much box-office success means to him. "It's a commercial business and it's good to know that you're considered saleable, dependable and bankable. It's comforting." He agrees he has taken numerous cinematic missteps over the years, faulty decisions that haven't led to much. "But mistakes can often be surprising. They throw you off a curve you don't expect."
Superstardom hasn't come easy. Initially derided as just another squeay-voiced star kid, Khan could never quite breach the Bollywood wall despite valiant attempts through the 1990s. "Somehow I think he never got his kind of movies," Sriram Raghavan, the director who first tapped into Khan's potential-filled dark side with Ek Hasina Thi, said in an interview. "He's a certain kind of guy and if you stuck him in a Hindi movie, the ones that were popular 10 years back, he always looked like a misfit. He would be mouthing dialogues in a certain way. There was something very intelligent and urbane about Saif." Try as he might, the sophisticated 'dude' couldn't ever really handle the formulaic assembly-line productions of the 1990s.
It wasn't till 2001, when Farhan Akhtar's Dil Chahta Hai broke through, that the audiences discovered the actor as he wanted to be, chilled out and for real. Also Bollywood — edgier, smarter and more given to subtler cinema — has evolved into an industry where Khan fits perfectly.
Tashan might not have created a splash at the box office, but Khan calls it a new age Bollywood film, the kind he is comfortable working in. "It's a fun commercial film. It's constantly slick and very, very stylish," he says. The actor plays Jimmy Cliff, a wannabe Yank whose real name is Jeetendra Kumar Makhwana. He's a hardcore flirt who gives English lessons at a call-centre.
Khan reacts to scripts on instinct, listening to the voice in his head to decide. "When I read a script, I think of whether it's a film that I would like to go to theatres to see or not. It's all about impulse. It's all vibe, you know?" So does he sit back on random evenings and watch reruns of his flicks on cable TV, or even pop a DVD in and smile at his own work? "Funnily enough, I've never done that. Never. It's crazy, and you're right, that's always been my criteria. But still... I will, though. Totally. I'll sit back and give Omkara the home theatre treatment. I should, na?"
And why not? Omkara, quite possibly the defining performance of his career, required his unruffled-silk urbanity to be buried beneath thick and ugly layers of grime. Shakespeare-lover Vishal Bhardwaj was convinced that Khan would make a perfect Iago. "Saif's job was a nightmare," Bhardwaj says, talking about how he loaded up the actor with localised idioms and expressions, and how khan had to start behaving like that unseemly, iconic Langda Tyagi in real life as well. "My own unit members were scared about how he would do the role. To go from a very urban, lover-boy image to that of a hardcore, creepy criminal... but I was always convinced Saif would do a great job."
Shaving off his head and going repulsively de-glam wasn't easy, and Khan calls it a brave decision — simply because mother Sharmila Tagore, one of Satyajit Ray's favourite actresses, was completely against it. "That made it a special, brave decision for me, the fact that I wanted this intense role and that my mother wasn't as convinced as I was." The result was an acting masterclass, a role that made critics strive for hyperbolic adjectives and finally make peace with the fact that Khan won the National Award a year back for 2004's Hum Tum.
Asked which films he feels have shaped his career, he splits them into three kinds — he starts "obviously" with Omkara, then accords prominent importance to "the Salaam Namaste, Hum Tum genre, which are casual, persona roles that let me be pretty much who I am without deep preparation" and finally, he tosses up a third. "Race. I mean the sheer numbers of that film have been massive. It's been the widest release I've ever got, and that opening weekend did give me a heady feeling. And it's what makes you a 'bankable star', you know?"
Being a star, of course, comes with its share of paparazzi. Khan's relationships have always made the headlines, be it with ex-wife Amrita Singh, Rosa Catalano or current flame and — of course — India's number one leading lady, Kareena Kapoor. "Well, it does often get a bit too boring. Where we ate Chinese food, what her diet plan is... So much of the press gets a kick out of 'Saif and Kareena this, Saif and Kareena that...'," he trails off, before breaking into a laugh. "But that's their job, I guess. It's cool."
Khan and Kapoor have also been remarkably blas with the press, announcing minus nonsense that they are seeing each other. "I think that had to be done, because it's a question of respectability. Pretending there's nothing going on is stupid and disrespectful towards the press. Plus, I also wanted to make it clear from the start that this is something we're both serious about, not just a passing fancy. I think the media's been great about it too. They respect the fact that we've been upfront. And I want to be frank about the fact that my intentions are honourable."
He laughs again when talking about the tattoo, the 'Kareena' emblazoned in Devnagri across his arm and — while admitting the idea wasn't his — says it was something he'd always been interested in. "And coming when it did in my life, it symbolised a lot of things. It's very personal. This has been a relationship with a lot of firsts and the tattoo was another." So are we talking permanence? "Well, we intend to, don't we? The tattoo isn't for the press or for anyone else at all, but perhaps it makes the statement that what we have isn't casual. It isn't a public declaration at all, but we have nothing to hide."
Right now, Khan is relaxed. He takes a month off for every film he does and he has two free months on his hands, months when he'll get to pick up and play with the brand new Gibson lying a few feet away. The actor enjoys rocking, be it with established rock band Parikrama or in his own house, and the guitar really lets him unwind. "He would often sit on the sets like it was a campfire," says Boman Irani, who acted with Saif in Darna Mana Hai, Eklavya and Being Cyrus. "He'd play us something, hang with the assistant directors and technicians, and he'd be very chilled out. He's a fun guy. But even when talking about movies or classic rock, he'll keep interrupting himself to bring up the scene we'll do next, or something about our characters. Which is a great sign, because you realise he's really internalising his roles."
During down-time, Khan has recently started going to the movies, which he didn't do too much of earlier. "I haven't watched that much current Hindi cinema, but now I see quite a bit of it. Kareena is more keen, so she takes me along. And watching a film you aren't a part of at a time when you aren't working is a really relaxing experience." I ask which of his films are his kids' favourites, and he calls out to daughter Sara (Race!) and son Ebrahim (Tashan!) and laughs at their responses. "I think they just have shorter attention spans, and Ebrahim's just biased because he's in Tashan."
Alongside the commercially viable hubbub, however, Khan's started his own production firm named Illuminati, focusing on making edgy, interesting cinema. The first three productions are a wild mix: Jab We Met director Imtiaz Ali's helming a romantic drama, a genre virtually dead in current romcom-friendly Bollywood; Raghavan's making an action thriller called Agent Vinod, a spy movie with the heart of the 1970s transposed into the present day; and buddy Homi Adajania is writing the script for a Western that has Khan virtually drooling. "It's a Western set post-1857, with bad boys and bad girls. Oh, and treasure." Nice.
Quite the line-up. "It's not that I prefer darker roles," he begins, before correcting himself and admitting he actually does. "Maybe it is just because they're darker, but I find those characters more realistic. They aren't all goody two-shoes, they have a seamier side to them, which makes the process of playing those characters unpredictable. They aren't conventional and as an actor, flaws are always fun to explore." And then he launches into dreams of making a Tim Burtonesque film like Sleepy Hollow, something dark and grisly and wildly funny, a folk tale populated by ghosts. "India needs a film like that. And we're gonna make it."
At one point, we talk briefly about celebrity pair-names, like Brangelina and Abhiwarya, and Khan — who frequently Googles himself to see what is being written about him — is instantly curious about what names have been coined thus far for the two of them. I toss up the two most popular ones, KareLi and Saifina, and he laughs for a minute before giving both options the boot. "I think neither of them really works. I mean, one just sounds like a gross vegetable, and the other, quite frankly, is pretty gay."
😆
Fair enough. Try harder, pressmen, paparazzi, gossip-bloggers — this guy's game for ya.
CID
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