His directorial debut Om Jai Jagadish -- starring Anil Kapoor, Fardeen Khan, Abhishek Bachchan, Mahima Chaudhary, Urmila Matondkar, Tara Sharma and Waheeda Rehman -- last year did not create the flutter
But Anupam Kher is already writing his next script. "The timing [of Om Jai Jagadish's release] was wrong. So many people have told me they found the film calming. I find that very reassuring. My next directorial venture is a love story between a father and a son called The Return. I am making it in English," he reveals.
Why English? "Because it is a universal story and the language is completely dictated by the way my characters think and talk. Besides, I want to reach out to an international audience. I will take another two months to finish scripting. Only then will I think about the casting."
Kher hopes to launch the film at the end of this year and has already earmarked a couple of producers.
The big news in this prolific actor's career is the autobiographical play Kuch Bhi Ho Sakta Hai, which goes on stage next month. "Playwrights Feroz Khan and Ashok Patole have written the story of all the disastrous events in my life. It is a one-actor show and I will enact all the calamitous events -- like my first play, my first girlfriend, my first role, embarrassing pauses which perhaps other actors would cringe from revealing. Though my play is about disasters, its tone is optimistic."
During his first play at school, Kher was thrown from the stage onto the audience by his co-actor. "That was my first disaster. In my first film, Mahesh Bhatt's Saraansh, I was nearly replaced by Sanjeev Kumar 10 days before the shoot. The third disaster was when I went to screen test for Jawaharlal Nehru's role in Richard Attenborough's Gandhi. When I entered the room to meet the director, he came out with an actor [Roshan Seth] and told me Nehru had been finalised. You will see many such disasters from my life in the play, including my disastrous efforts to build a software company and host a game show, Sawaal Dus Crore Ka. The tale culminates in my directorial debut Om Jai Jagadish last year.
"The play is about courage and hope," says Kher. "If a small man in a loin cloth [Mahatma Gandhi] can preach freedom and nonviolence; if [former South African president] Nelson Mandela can end apartheid and Rabri Devi can become chief minister [of Bihar], anything can happen. I have a feeling this play will work well."
Kher wants to take it to every part of India.
The closing lines of the play came from actress Sushmita Sen. Says Kher, "She is a wonderful person. I say at the end of the play, What you think is the end of the play is the interval of my life and what you think is the death of a moth is essentially the birth of a butterfly.' That line came from her."
Kher has cut down on his acting assignments -- he only has one film in hand. "It is a small, semi-experimental film called Khosla Ka Ghosla being shot in Delhi," Kher reveals. Written by Jaideep Saini (Company) and directed by debutante Diwakar Chatterjee, the film stars Parvin Dabas (Monsoon Wedding) and Konkona Sensharma (Aparna Sen's daughter, seen recently in Mr & Mrs Iyer).
Kher has lost weight to play the gaunt patriarch. "Since it is the only film I have on hand, I wanted to look different from what I usually do. I have been working out regularly with my friend Anil Kapoor."
Though he played the harried father in Gurinder Chadha's Bend It Like Beckham, he is not part of the director's new project, Bride And Prejudice. "Maybe it was not exciting for her to work with the same actor again. She put me off completely in an interview by stating that Bend It Like Beckham gave the Mumbai film industry a kick in the rear. This is where I earn my bread and butter and she has no business talking that way. Bend It Like Beckham was made with conviction. Now she is on a star signing binge."
Kher looks forward to the day his stepson Sikander will debut in Hindi films. "He is training to be an actor. He is 6 feet 2 inches tall. And he has great strength of will. He used to be so fat. He lost 60 kilos."