The less people know about you, the more you understand how beautiful life is. It’s good when you exist only on screen. I don’t want them to take me home. I love to have my privacy.
The only thing my famous last name got me was a foothold in the industry. That was the easy part. The biggest problem is survival. As Fazil’s son, I am expected to know everything – acting, dancing, horse riding… I am not trained in all these, and I don’t think I ever will be.
When I listen to a basic thought, I try to visualise the cinema in it. Sometimes it is dark, sometimes boyish, sometimes amateurish. It is a trial and error method. But the bottom line is that I want to entertain the audience.
Let me make something clear: I can’t do anything in particular to make others laugh. I do what is necessary for a character. The body language of the character may make others laugh.
As an actor, you create a character from your understanding of what you have heard and your observations. Eventually, every film is an extension of the images that I have seen or what I have heard or read somewhere.
I have been fortunate to collaborate with people who have been open to discussion. If I tell them something, they have always explained to me why they want it the other way.
I have always maintained that the audience should take a call on this. Its up to them to decide whether they want to see a pirated version or not. They should understand the effort and amount of hard work that go into a film.
Every character, when it comes to a cinematic representation, gets complicated and layered. You are given a lot of dimensions than a single dimension to an individual. That’s the main difference between seeing something out of the window and seeing something on screen.
It’s the failure of my debut film which made me an actor, which made me want to succeed in the industry. But that doesn’t mean I regret whatever choices I’ve made over the years. No, not even ‘Kaiyethum Doorathu!’
