Irrfan Khan on why he wants to drop his last name PriyankaPereira
Posted online: Nov 21, 2008 at 1130 hrs

Mumbai, November 21:: When Irrfan Khan first ventured into films, he was keen on parallel cinema. It was a dying art then and his interest soon shifted to being a villain’s sidekick. ‘If Gulshan Grover could get a role, so could I,’ he says. And that determination has got him a long way since his struggling days. Successful Hollywood releases, critically acclaimed roles and several path-breaking films later, his aim is to steer clear of stereotypes. ‘It troubles me when people tag me as a serious or an intense actor. So in the last two years, I’ve tried to do roles that are difficult to categorise and I was lucky to get suitable ones,’ he smiles.

With his next release, ‘Dil Kabaddi’, he hopes to get a stronghold on commercial cinema. ‘After ‘Life in a Metro’, ‘Krazzy 4’ and ‘Sunday’, audience saw the comic in me. ‘Dil Kabaddi’ is an extension of ‘Life in a Metro’, I play the role of a naïve, boring, banker who is dealing with marital issues,’ he says.

He’s a tad upset at not being paired opposite Konkona Sen Sharma, who he shares a special rapport with. ‘I was supposed to be paired opposite Konkona, but Rahul Bose insisted he did that role. This time he has taken her away from me,’ he jokes. ‘But if that hadn’t happened, I wouldn’t have had a chance to work with Soha Ali Khan, a spontaneous and talented actor.’

It is the spontaneity of the film, the unstructured dialogue and the free-flowing scenes that Khan truly appreciates. ‘The director (Anil Sharma Senior— that is his name) gave us the freedom to alter dialogue and reconstruct scenes. The camera simply followed us,’ says Khan, who acknowledges this as the best phase in Indian cinema. ‘We are now exposed to world cinema and are willing to experiment with the way we present our stories,’ says the actor.

With his upcoming releases — Priyadarshan’s Billo Barber, Sanjay Gupta’s Acid Factory, Jennifer Chambers Lynch’s Hisss and Kabir Khan’s New York, Khan hopes to enter the popular consciousness of the masses. ‘But the role I’m really looking forward to is that of Pan Singh Tomar. It is a real-life story of a military officer, who faces social injustice when he returns to the village and is forced to become a dacoit in the Chambal Valley.’

With so many films in the kitty, does he plan on making it to the Khan bandwagon of Bollywood? ‘I am planning to get rid of my surname,’ he laughs. ‘I feel burdened under pressure.’