I would say all three have been fantastic. All three have made the films much more believable than what they were on paper just by their sheer performances. It is not about the performances alone. It is about how he (the lead actor) merges with the entire cast, how he translates himself to give and take with the co-actors. I think the three characters were very tough characters. Mohan (Swades) was very tough. Bhuvan (Lagaan) was also extremely tough as a character. And Akbar too is. So if you ask me, I have admiration for all three of them.

What defines each of them as a performer?

Aamir, I would say, has the Method approach. He is methodical in approaching his character and his acting. Shah Rukh, I would say, is someone who is much more instinctively spontaneous. You can't make Aamir spontaneous and you can't make Shah Rukh methodical. You can't interchange their attitudes because they have self developed, they understand themselves too well.

Hrithik, I would say, is a blend of the two of them. Because there are times when he would approach a scene with a Method approach in which he was really working at it. And there are scenes in which he would just come and approach it completely with spontaneity. In both cases what was tough was the Urdu, because that was a language in which he had to be comfortable in. So his preparation would keep oscillating between the methodic approach and the spontaneous, depending of what kind of scene it was.

And is it deliberate that you surround your main actors with an ensemble cast so that their characters become more believable?

I am glad you noticed that. Yeah, I've always tried to do that.

I notice between the credits of Swades and Jodhaa Akbar, there are only two actors who you have repeated: Rajesh Vivek and Vishwas Arora. All the other actors are new.

I think the world that you are creating can only become believable if you don't know two things: The people (the actors) and the landscape. That's why the landscape is very important and so are the faces. Because only when that is new do you feel that you've entered a new world. It is the world that as an audience you don't know.

So if I had Champaner in Lagaan or if I had Charanpur in Swades, here I had 16th century Agra and Amer. It was definitely another world. If it needed Hrithik and Aishwarya's known stardom for it to become more vulnerable and more believable, then they had to be surrounded by people whom we don't know. Also to make believe you need landscape that has not been seen. That's what I like doing.

Also read: Making Jodhaa-Akbar dance

Back

|

Next