'If I were not acting I'd be locked up in some asylum'

Do you think like this because there is no parallel cinema anymore?

There has been a total stop to parallel cinema. Also, I wanted do a film where I'd be really noticed. Whoever was fading out in the commercial film and they were on the lookout for an art film actress. There was a phase in between when this happened. Maybe it was luck or no luck. Maybe it was a phase for me to discover that I could be a director and a producer and an actor all together. Maybe there is a multiplicity to me that was to be born. I would like to believe that this might be the reason. Because that was the period when I wrote my first script got into production and directed plays for the NSD and taught there too. I am doing a lot of things today, which are my own, creating my own work. Those two years have given me a chance to completely blossom into my own.

What about the concept of good cinema?

I am no longer interested in this term, "good cinema". I will tell you honestly -- and this is a very, very honest confession -- that I just don't want to do any art films about a crusading woman anymore. It's the biggest cliché ever known. I would much rather do a Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct.

I think that is a much more difficult and exciting role to do rather than a woman who has this axe in her hand, fighting for her rights or such crap against some zamindari system. For god's sake, it's not even close to my idea of charity or fantasy.

So, if I, as a director, was to make a film with a subject like this, I would probably do it with imagination. Great cinema goes beyond such reality. I think this whole thing is also about career moves.

At the moment I want to have fun. For example the role I did in Gum is about a peasant girl on a farm in Goa and I put on seven kilos for the role. I look the kind of woman who can do hard work, can lift weights. That is a kind of an art film because it is totally deglamourised and I am not looking pretty either. That is what the serial's all about... Part of her angst is that she is not good-looking.

Are you a little put off that our good-looking and glamorous actress are beginning to get aware of good cinema too?

I won't get irritated, because every actress tries to make her career at every point in her life. They have a right to do one good film a year. They have to find something else to hang on to, and this is the only way to do it. I haven't fallen into that yet, but I'll go on for a long time. I won't be doing 700 films in 15 years, I won't belong to a certain territory and so I don't have to protect it.

If somebody want to do an art film, they are welcome to do it, because now I am doing something else. I don't feel as if the commercial actresses are doing parallel cinema now, so what will I do. I realise that my market has become much more complex, multifaceted. There's longevity there.

How is that?

I am introducing this serial, and then, another one has become a film now. Then there is one role in London, with American and British actors. I just don't see art films as my fiefdom. Anybody who does such films is fine by me. I am looking for something vaster.

Did you enjoy English August?

I did enjoy the shooting of English August. There is not much of a role to speak of. I am getting tired of making these nice little appearances. I think the film became so long that they had to chop a lot of it. I know we shot a lot though.

Okay, when did you realise that you wanted to be an actress?

I came when I entered college. I became well-known for doing plays. I never thought I'd be acting for a living. But I found out that I was happiest when acting. I was more sane then. Everything made sense then. My whole sense of joy and fun was to go up there and facing an audience. It's only when you want it as a profession, because you don't want to do something else, that name, fame, money come into it. You start working towards it. Even now I am doing plays, and there I don't think of being paid. It's been seen by 200 people at a time.

If I were not acting I'd be locked up in some asylum. I am not the type of person who'd get satisfied with a husband and children and be very happy if my husband is doing very well. I'd die if I had to live like this. This not my temperament and I always have to be my own person. Even when I came to this industry, I didn't want to be known as somebody's friend.

I wanted to be known as me. I remember this person -- a famous international photographer -- who became a good friend and invited me to this music concert and I refused. There was nothing to it -- we were good friends. And he said that every girl wanted to be seen with him so what was the problem. I told him that I didn't want to be seen with him because I didn't want to be known as his girl or friend. It is not me to be somebody's wife or mother. I am married now and I kept really quiet about it.

Really? What does he do and how is your relationship with your husband?

My husband is a director and an old friend too. He is from London and he is making a film on Ritwick Ghatak now. He and I don't sit on each other's head all the time. If we are together for the whole day in the house, we might spend about three hours together and the rest doing our own thing.

When I was getting married, I felt as if I was walking into a deep dark well; I didn't know what it was all about. I was going to behave as if one brushes their teeth. That casual, something you do every day.

Initially, I was embarrassed to even introduce him as my husband. Now it's easier. The word "husband" didn't connect with me. It has not changed really in that sense. My husband and I are very cool. He is away in London and I am here with my work. We share a lot of things like books, movies and music.

Before we got married itself we had this creative rapport with each other. On this film we are working together in, it's amazing how much like strangers we are. I was so free of him as an actress and, likewise, he was free of me as a director. He could have been any director and I could have been any other actress. In fact, he is much more charming, nicer, with the actresses of his film.

There is no ego problem at all. The best thing about us is that we are individuals. We don't even share many friends with each other. He doesn't like many friends of mine and I still socialise with them and vice versa. Marriage had been perfect for me this way. Children are a big responsibility and I am not keen on them now. There is such a lot to be done and I can see my life going by.

How do you suppose you will be liked and accepted by the people who see commercial films?

People don't relate to me as a front bench star anyway. I don't think I need to do 30 films to be in the reckoning. I think I can do two major roles in commercial cinema can make that kind of impact.

Did you ever feel that you might be somebody like Shabana or Smita Patil since they were the only ones who have made it successfully both in art and commercial films?

I didn't think I'd want to be like Shabana or Smita. But with Smita, I wasn't too impressed, except that film with Amitabh, Shakti. They had some chemistry there. A lot of her films didn't have her involved at all, especially those with Rajesh Khanna.

She was, what, 15 years older than me? I had the desire to do something which wasn't done before, something fresh and new. I know that when Kumar Shahani was doing Kasbah, Smita was the original choice for the film, and then she died.

Two years later, he cast me in that film. But I didn't ever want to be a Shabana or Smita. I wanted to be known as myself. When I made films my profession, I didn't make a choice, it just happened. I visualised myself as being someone who would do some major work, maybe along the lines of these two actresses. And get known for talent. Also do a lot of international work too.

I don't even think I'm the same person I was eight or nine years ago. I've even cut my hair. Then I'd keep it long and hang on to an image. But I've changed the way I look at myself. Five years ago, I didn't think I'd be producing my own stuff, that I would be writing and directing, that I'd have my own production company.

Have you enjoyed working with all the directors and your co stars?

I enjoyed working with everyone. Despite not having much work in Dil Se, I enjoyed working with Mani Ratnam. He has this naughty sense of humour. I liked working with Vikram Bhatt. He is someone nice to work with and a nice person too. He'd always say I was a pain in the neck and pull my leg constantly.

Govind Nihalani is someone I had fun working with. We would have these fights on the sets. He's only person I fight with on how a scene has to be done. It's very important to me to like my directors. I like liking my directors. It makes me feel like giving a lot of myself to the films. A director doesn't have to do a lot for that. They should know their jobs well enough. I don't think I have disliked anybody. I also feel a director casts you only when he likes you.

I liked my co-stars very much. Dimple was a wonderful co-star. There is a scene in the film where the whole dialogue was mine, and while I was saying it, my hair falls in front of my face and Dimple very spontaneously puts it back. It was such a natural gesture, I was completely in love with her. I loved working with Om Puri in Drohkaal. He is such a loveable character that he would be considerate about a dog on the sets too.

When Govind and I would have our arguments, he'd go to him and say that he'd do the scene again, but to please not nag me. I didn't even know about this. Govind told me later how protective he was about me. Aamir was very nice too. He would come and give me my cues and help me a lot. Even Rani Mukherjee was sweet.

Shah Rukh and me had this fight sequence in the film (Dil Se) and he was so careful. After every punch, he'd ask me whether he hurt me. He was very protective of me. Right in the beginning there is a scene where Shah Rukh and Raghuvir Yadav are blindfolded and I lead them across a bridge. I was given these plastic-soled shoes and the light was going down and it was cold.

At the last moment Mani decided I'd wear a shawl and I just wrapped it the way I wanted. Shah Rukh came and folded up the shawl properly and wrapped it around me nicely. Then I took two steps and couldn't see and nearly went over the mountain. I got stuck on a branch and I didn't know it because I had my back towards it. I had a lot of weight on, a sten gun and baggage. Shah Rukh just pulled me up... All my co-stars have been great fun to work with.

Which is the ideal role you'd like to do?

This is a question that I've been asked so frequently that I don't why I don't think about it. But now that you ask, I've always waited for something nobody has done before. The role that Helen Hunt has in As Good As it Gets. Nobody could have done that role. I can't see anybody else in her place. When I really like a role, I don't see myself doing that role at all. I would like to something where nobody can better it.

Tell us about your early life before and after you entered the industry?

I was born in Pune and brought up all over the country. My father was an army man. I settled in Bombay when I started working. My father was a little apprehensive about my choice of a career, but he didn't object.

The first couple of years went like a dream. I'd just walked out of NSD and come to Bombay and I signed many serials after that. The first three years I was flying high. I never thought I'd sit at home for more than four days. I never thought I'd be out of work. By the time I realised that I may not have that much offered to me, that I may have to sit at home, I was too deep into it to do anything else.

Because you love it, you take it. I was meant for this and destined for this. This is my place. I'm convinced of it.

I've a cousin who is about 10 years younger than me, and he was telling me once that he wanted to be like me. He wanted to be rich and famous like me and he asked me how I did it. I told him he was starting out wrong. I feel that you've got to be in love with what you are doing. There has to be passion in all that you do, even if you are a sweeper. You've got to dream like that.

This is not only a profession with me, it's a passion. There are no short cuts. There is a Zen poetess who asked (which is in the 14th century), "Are there shortcuts in the sky, summer moon?"

Tell us what you think of this feature