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Yes Mr Superstar
He was a celebrity manager for only a day, but Punit (name changed) remembers that day as the most action-packed few hours of his professional life. Asked to step in at the last minute by his employer, a leading talent management agency, Punit accompanied an actor to the National Film Awards. "At one moment he would be nice and friendly and introduce me to his contemporaries," says Punit, "but at another moment his attitude would be, 'I'm a celebrity. You can't keep me waiting'." The actor told Punit off for not keeping autograph hunters at bay though he was happily entertaining them only a few minutes ago. When the actor wanted his cell phone sneaked into the venue at any cost, Punit was forced to hide it in his pants to ensure they parted on good terms. The actor and he had a laugh over it after the event.
From bad boy to being human
Celebrity managers, employed with talent management agencies such as Matrix, Carving Dreams, Bling, CAA Kwan and Yash Raj Films, lurk behind their clients like shadows.They accompany them to script-reading sessions, print interviews, magazine cover shoots, and lay down non-negotiable rules that stars don't want to be seen talking about directly: Business class air travel, S-class car pick-ups, and five-star suites.
Today, the route to a star is only through a manager. Often the managers are incessantly busy, making them as difficult to contact as the actors they represent. But they do not have a job description. "You're their shrink, agony aunt, damage-control expert, problem solver, great white shark dressed as Mother Teresa or the other way around, punching bag, and sounding board," says photographer Atul Kasbekar, 47, director of Bling agency. "In between all of this you have to be a Zen monk. But ultimately, the business advice given is not based on emotion." Celebrity managers are often expected to do the impossible. "They want flight routes to far-off destinations with no stopovers, and then they want their tickets to be changed at the last minute. They don't realise that we don't own the airline," says Pia Sawhney, 35, also a director at Bling. From checking them in and out of the hotel and checking the security guards are in place to ensuring that their vanity van has reached the set, they leave no stone unturned to make sure that the actor has little to worry and complain about.
Remember, don't botch up or else
But it is business advice from celebrity managers that the stars seek and value. In the era of corporatisation, they have taken their clients beyond the world of cinema.
Patience, good organisational skills, and a strong work ethic are the basics needed to survive in the profession, says Blah. "You've to sacrifice a lot. You have to be empathetic enough about a person's needs and ensure there are no goof-ups." It's a relationship rooted in trust that often extends beyond the line of duty. Parineeti Chopra and her manager Neha Anand, 26, for example, are buddies who go out for pizza and enjoy Punjabi music blaring on the stereo as they skirt Mumbai's traffic. Neena Rao, who has been representing Sunny Deol for 16 years, is now his right hand. "Initially Sunny didnt even know my name and he was so shy that it took him six months to open up to me. But it's been too long for us now to not be concerned about each others' family," says Rao.
The good, bad and ugly side of stardom
A rookie celebrity manager starts off at Rs.25,000 per month. With experience, he or she can earn about Rs.30 to 40 lakh per year. It may not be as glamorous a job as it appears from a distance, but there are perks. Jayanti Saha, a senior agent at CAA Kwan, for example, accompanied Freida Pinto to the Doha Film Festival in November 2012 and got to meet Robert De Niro in the process. "The actors are in a high-pressure job in which they are constantly judged for what they are eating, wearing and doing," says Saha, 27, who manages the accounts of Kalki Koechlin, Anurag Kashyap, Mahesh Babu and Deepika Padukone. "One must understand they're human beings who have good and bad days."
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