In the lobby of Bombay’s JW Marriott, Irrfan Khan looks every inch the Bollywood star. He is sharply dressed, wearing sunglasses indoors and has just the right amount of stubble to appear rakish but not scruffy.
Even in this beachside hang-out, which rarely disappoints star spotters, his presence commands attention. Aside from appearance, though, Khan is not like most Hindi film actors. For a start, he is on time. This is unusual for an Indian; unprecedented for a famous one.
Furthermore, he does not want to leave the minute he has sat down. For an hour and a quarter, the most talked about actor in town gives me his full attention without once looking over my shoulder.
It is a winning performance. Much like the one he pulls off in The Namesake, his Hollywood debut released this month. Directed by Mira Nair, whose previous credits include Monsoon Wedding, it is based on Jhumpa Lahiri’s novel about a Bengali couple’s transportation from Calcutta to Boston in the 1970s following their arranged marriage.
The film relocates to New York but retains the central themes of cultural disorientation and the generational divide. Spanning 20 years and multiple characters, the script is distilled to two key relationships: man and wife and father and son.
Both involve Khan, who plays Ashoke Ganguli, a taciturn professor attracted to the American way of life but keen to preserve Indian traditions for his two US-born children.
It was Khan’s first English-speaking role (and his first visit to America), reuniting the actor with Nair, who could only give him a small part in Salaam Bombay, his film debut. “She told me she owed me a role,” he said.
The pay-back was worth the 19-year wait. His performance has won critical acclaim. For a natural talker, Ganguli was a challenging role. “He’s the kind of guy who doesn’t get noticed,” he said, sipping ice tea. “He’s that silent and that contented.”
His own father, who ran a tyre business in Jaipur, died when Khan was barely 20 years old. He empathises with the regrets of Gogol, his on-screen son played by Kal Penn.
“We just started bonding and then he passed away,” he said. “My younger son is three and a half and there are so many things I want to explain but I know he’s too young to understand. When he wants to involve me in his own things, I will be too old. I fear that.”
Khan, 39, married to writer Sutapa Sikdar, hails from a middle-class family with standard aspirations. His mother wanted – still wants – him to become a lecturer in Rajasthan. Instead he attended Delhi’s National School of Drama and moved to Bombay, the entertainment capital. “She doesn’t give much value to this world. If I became religious she would be happy,” he said.
His breakthrough was The Warrior, British director Asif Kapadia’s Himalayan epic, which won a Bafta in 2003. “There was no reason why I should have got that part,” Khan recalled. “I wanted to leave acting because it wasn’t engaging me enough. I was directing something for the BBC and enjoying that. But Asif and I had a connection.”
It is his next film that will really get Khan noticed outside India. A Mighty Heart, released this summer, is based on Marianne Pearl’s book about the brutal murder of her journalist husband, Daniel, by Islamic extremists after 9/11.
Playing Captain, head of Pakistan’s anti-terrorist squad, Khan is cast opposite Angelina Jolie and directed by Michael Winterbottom, who he describes as “a revelation”. Shot in India because of political sensitivities, it sparked chaotic scenes as a celebrity-obsessed media tailed Jolie and her partner Brad Pitt.
“I never wanted to be conscious of her as a big star but the media hyped it so much I stopped reading newspapers,” Khan said. “She is probably the most sensible woman I have come across. Both of them are.”
While two to three scripts land on his doormat daily, Khan is considering his next project. One option is Johnny Depp’s Shantaram, based on Gregory David Roberts’ best-seller about an Australian convict’s assimilation into the Bombay underworld.
“My only concern right now is to get interesting work. I’m not worried about being typecast. The Hindi movie industry wanted to typecast me as a villain but I handled it. Strangely, my roles abroad have been positive. So now I’m getting Hindi scripts for heroes with an edge – bad-boy heroes,” he said, with a hearty laugh. “I’m resisting it. I don’t plan things. If you have desire, you never know how life will surprise you.”
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