In your long career in Bollywood, what are the two most important things that you think you have achieved?
I would say my commitment, my professionalism, my discipline. I think the basic thing I have been able to achieve is dignity. Despite being in the film industry for so many years, people treat me with respect.
Respectability and acceptability are two things. What I mean is that I have been in films but nobody has ever spoken to me without respect. Nobody has treated me cheaply.
Even after coming to politics, when I became a Cabinet minister, people said I should have been made a minister much earlier. People said this because they saw in me a transparent person, a person of commitment.
If you ask me about my plus points, they are my character, my courage, my consistency, transparency and also the strength and desire to sail against the tide.
Could you elaborate on this last bit?
Look at my film career -- (I have moved) from negative roles to doing positive and lead roles. Shah Rukh Khan did that later. Perhaps, it had never happened before -- that someone who was a villain came to play positive, lead roles.
The same producers/directors, who took me as a villain, were forced to take me as a good man and a hero thanks to people's faith in me and their perception of me. After that I became a solo hero in movies like Kalicharan, Vishwanath, Admi Sarak Ka, Sangram and many such films. So this is sailing against the tide.
Now come to politics. I have shown consistency and courage to sail against the tide.
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