Playing the bad guy can leave its mark on you Manoj Bajpai confesses to Farhad J Dadyburjor.
You've been considered the quintessential character actor. Comment. Acting is actually your own viewpoint — what you’ve learnt from life. It’s very serious business. It’s about introspection and understanding others: When you’re dealing with a new character, you’re trying to understand a person, who might actually exist.
So it gives you a certain kind of patience in real life. It opens up your viewpoint, widens your vision of life. That’s why I’m so passionate about it — passionate about meeting people, passionate about interacting with them, or even taking a quiet corner and observing others.
Observing the antics of others — is that how you get under the skin of your characters? I bring my own life experiences to the table. I’ve met so many people, seen so much of life. Seen so many different avenues. Besides that, you trust your own imagination and the reading material.
How do you read your recent character in Road? He’s very unpredictable. He’s a stranger whose nature is much like that of a road. When you think of travelling, you think of a road that is all sorts of things — wide open spaces, speedbreakers, potholes, greenery, motels, ‘dhabas’, people from different backgrounds, etc. There’s never just one thing that you think of. The character is just that — colourful, with various shades. He drives the film. But with him, things are never easy.
You’ve always been drawn to darker roles. Why? It just so happened that those roles came my way, and that they had that edge that I’ve always wanted to touch. That kind of edge, in characters and creative work, has always fascinated me — it challenges me as an actor. If you look at all the roles that I’ve done, you’ll find that they’re so different from each other because of that edge — but they are all human beings. They are all part of our life. You can’t ignore them.
Has a character ever stayed on with you? That used to happen earlier - when doing theatre. I was not a hardcore professional then, to shed my character so easily. But I think after Satya , I started learning to switch off.
But doesn’t acting invariably creep into your real life? It does — if you let it. But I’d be hypocritical if I said that some characters haven’t left their marks on me — yes, they have. Sometimes, they create confusion and clash with my sense of self. But since I’m constantly observing myself, I’ve developed a third eye, and I’m always noting what is going wrong, and why. I work on it and try to change that in myself.
Are you over-critical with yourself? I’m very, very critical. I would say that I’m my biggest critic. In fact, I don’t like any work of mine that I’ve done because now when I look back, I feel that I could have done it differently.
Do you enjoy taking up work which is more experimental in nature? Yes, I love it, because somewhere, it demands a certain growth in you, not only as a human being but as an actor.
What’s the one role you’d kill for?