In this series of posts, I’ll take
the honour of introducing to you some of India’s ‘bestest ka bhi best’ actors
who I feel truly define what acting actually is but yet not so celebrated ones.
These actors are the rarest of the species of actors on earth yet we miserably
fail to acknowledge their unending talent. Have you seen ‘Kahaani’? Yes? Then you
must have unfailingly noticed the cocky
CBI agent Khan, who struts around scaring the hell out of local cops in
Kolkota. yes, that’s Mr. Nawazzudin Siddiqui for you. to make you more familiar
to this extra-ordinary actor, I have a series of articles I came across
which best describe him. Please, spare a
read..it would be worth it!!
The
mark of a good actor—Aseem Chhabra for Mumbai Mirror.
Nawazuddin is gifted with charm and a certain energy that helps him
transform into diverse characters he plays on screen.
In
Patang, he is Chakko — a wedding band singer in Ahmedabad — who resents his
wealthy relatives and holds them responsible for his father’s death. In
Chittagong, he is Nirmal Sen an idealist freedom fighter who has a hard time
expressing his love for a colleague. In Dekh Indian Circus he is a poor
villager, a mute man and father of two, who has to face his children’s
disappointment when they realise he cannot take them on an outing to a
circus. And in Gangs of Wasseypur, he plays the younger son of rural gangster
who reflects the nervous energy of Freddie Corleone and also the aspiring
confidence of Michael Corleone (The Godfather).
These
are the four faces of Nawazuddin Siddiqui — the terrific actor of indie Hindi
cinema — that I have seen in the past two weeks.
In a field packed with Bollywood stars who rarely take risks and play anything other than the one-note characters the audience want them to be, Nawaz is a rare actor, a human chameleon. .
Nawaz is in Cannes celebrating the world premieres of his two films — Gangs of Wasseypur and Miss Lovely, a rare achievement for an actor unknown on the world stage. But we are also witnessing the summer of Nawaz in the US. Patang and Dekh Indian Circus played the week before last at the Silk Screen Asian American Film Festival in Pittsburgh. And then I flew back from Pittsburgh to come home to the New York Indian Film Festival, where I saw three of Nawaz’s films — Chittagong, Gangs and also, one more time, Circus. And if these diverse rich performances of Nawaz were not enough, on Thursday a set of wire image pictures from Cannes showed the Miss Lovely team — dressed up, posing under a cloudy sky. Along with the film’s director Ashim Ahluwalia, and his other cast, I saw the dashing Nawaz — far from the life of his village near Muzzafarnagar, Uttar Pradesh, dressed in black suit, narrow tie and a crisp white shirt. That is Nawaz, the 38-year-old graduate of Delhi’s National School of Drama who seems to be in practically every film I see lately. When I met him last month during his Patang promotion trip to New York (the film opens here on June 15), he said he had 10 films waiting to be released in India including Reema Kagti’s Talaash. What is the mark of a good actor? To answer that question, one has to look at a person like Nawaz. He is unassuming, a bit shy at first. He has none of the arrogance that one sometimes sees in big stars. But his eyes sparkle and his smile is infectious. He is gifted with a lot of charm and there is certain energy in him that helps him transform into the diverse characters he plays on the screen. In a field packed with Bollywood stars who rarely take risks and play anything other than the one-note characters the audience want them to be, Nawaz is a rare actor, a human chameleon. And that may be one reason why people often do not remember him from his supporting roles in many of his films. This past week, as I would mention Nawaz’s name again and again to friends and strangers I met at the two festivals in Pittsburgh and New York, I would often be asked a question like this: “Remind me again, what films has he acted in?” And so I would start off by describing his character in Peepli Live, the earnest journalist who dies in the end, or in Kahaani, where he is the cocky CBI agent Khan, who struts around scaring the hell out of local cops in Kolkota. And then people would seem to remember him. But I know things will change if most of his 10 films open in India this year. I know people will be blown away by his relative small role in Dekh Indian Circus, especially a playful seductive scene between him and actress Tannishtha Chatterjee, who plays his wife. And I know people will smile watching Nawaz try to express his love to Vega Tamotia’s Pritilata Waddedar in Chittagong, as Shankar Mahadevan sings Bolo Na in the background. Soon it will be a festival of Nawaz in India as well! |
