“I always felt that it's better to be on the fringe than try to be the insider - and I never had this dream of becoming an insider. In fact, I call myself an outsider.” – Manoj Bajpayee

He is undoubtedly one of the best actors in the indus-try and his filmography tells you that in big bold let-ters. But he is also rather hat ke – he does his work, takes his pay cheque and goes home rather than tom-tomming his great achievements. Under-stated, he insists, “I don’t take myself seriously.” But the man is a gold mine of talent and like a chameleon, his persona transforms magically from one character to the other. Meet the super talented Manoj Bajpayee, an actor par excellence, who in a candid interview with Sumita Chakraborty talks about his eventful journey as an actor, his films and the OTT, and gives an honest take on ‘insiders versus outsiders’ and more. Read on…

- Sumita Chakraborty

Manoj, you’ve had a remarkable journey and you are one of our best actors. But, I believe your struggle story before entering the industry is unique. Could you tell us about it?

I personally believe that every struggle, though I don’t want to call my journey a struggle because this is something I always wanted to do - and I don’t believe you are struggling even if you are facing difficulties because your eyes and your mind is always focused on the goal. And what will make you achieve that goal is the craft and your whole purpose is to learn the craft and to keep going on every story. Every person who has big dreams in their eyes is unique and their journey too is very unique and I personally don’t want to glorify the journey. People give you so much respect not because of your journey but because of the work they see - and that makes them curious about knowing your life. At the end of the day, what I always believed in is that one should always focus on the work one wants to do and the dream you set out for and the craft… everything after that just gets blurred. No matter how many difficulties you face, the passion for the craft always takes you there - it makes you forget everything in between.

You were not from the film industry so what made you think of becoming an actor?