Irrfan Khan: The Messiah Of Meaningful Cinema

His calm and collected behaviour speaks a lot about the person he is. He speaks less, listens more. He expresses less, observes more. That makes him a nuanced performer who's able to seamlessly blend with every character he opts to play. The actor doesn't just pick idiosyncrasies to incorporate in the part, he makes them his own. He becomes the character. After delivering three power packed performances on celluloid this year, whether mainstream entertainers or thought-provoking cinema, this man has certainly made his mark! In the plush interiors of a suburban five-star, Irrfan Khan sits down for a candid chat with Pooja Sharma.

- Pooja Sharma

You’ve mentioned earlier that you don’t watch Hindi films. Don’t you feel it is important to be updated about trends in the industry, and won’t it somewhere affect your craft?

Whenever a film does well, you want to know why it’s doing well. Sometimes you can watch it, sometimes it doesn’t engage you, so you don’t watch it. It’s just that. I don’t have a need to watch each and every film. For me, movie watching is not a compulsion. It’s more of a passion. If a film does not engage me, whether it’s a Nepali or Hindi or Hollywood film, I don’t watch it.

Is it because your sensibilities and the way you look at films has now changed, working as you have, in the West?

No. I used to watch Hollywood cinema and European cinema when I was in National School of Drama. So my perceptions were formed in my early days. But I didn’t know that I’d get the chance to work in that industry. So it hasn’t just given me experience as an actor, it has broadened my experiences, and it has done tremendous things for me after working with these kind of directors. But the perception was already there.

Jurassic Park 4 has been a Box-Office blockbuster across the globe and a big step in your career too. What kind of film offers have you been receiving post its success?

I think I was getting offers from there even before that. Life Of Pi was such a big success. Also, Slumdog Millionaire was a success. So it’s not the first success I have experienced. I’m getting regular kind of roles from there.

What’s your dream role?

I don’t know. You can’t think about a dream role like that. When