KAMAL HAASAN: I AM A CHILD OF CINEMA

My biggest hero is not Alexander or Napoleon. It’s Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi.... With that stirring declaration, Tamil cinema icon and political trailblazer Kamal Haasan sets the tone for an unfiltered chat with Gulf News, ahead of his Eid release, Thug Life, directed by Mani Ratnam.

- By Manjusha Radhakrishnan

Alluding to historic conquerors Alexander the Great and Napoleon Bonaparte, the actor makes it clear that he values moral courage over military might.

He recently sparked debate with his comments about the linguistic roots of Kannada, stirring a hornet’s nest back home. But in person, in the UAE, he remains composed, sharp, and defiantly idealistic a man driven more by conviction than convenience.

Do you set out to reinvent yourself with each role?

My qualification does not come from any formal film school or university — my only qualification in cinema. I am a child of cinema. Above all, I'm a cinema buff. So, I want what an audience wants too. I don’t want to see the same kind of films all the time either because that’s for people who take cinema lightly. As for people who are really cinema buffs, they’ll see every kind of cinema as long as it has a certain sensi-

bility. Every film should ideally have a trendsetting quality to it. We are trying to emulate that. And mostly Mr. Mani [Ratnam] and I would say, we must make the film that we would like to see. Then comes — we'd like people to see what we like. That’s the second part.

As an audience, I’m often surprised by the things I end up liking. Are you, as an artist, also flabbergasted by what works?

No, I’m not. I accept the world with all kinds of flaws. I'm not racial and I don’t believe in the caste system. I’ve lost my gods, because there are so many of them that it creates tension. So I’m shedding all those, making sure I have a pleasant stay on earth.