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‘What’s the point of doing a film no one watches?’
Actor Arjun Rampal prefers his own pace in his career. He entered Bollywood in 2001, but has since, slowed down on the number of projects he takes up. He hasn’t had a theatrical release in almost three years. “Sometimes, you take a long gap, as you want to be patient that something good is going to come. When you go in front of the camera (after this while), you think you’ve forgotten everything,” he laughs.
He recently starred in Nail Polish, a web film which got good reviews. Wasn’t he worried that out of sight for such a long time could have led to being out of the audience’s mind too? He admits people did tell him that. “I said, ‘What’s the point of doing a film no one is going to watch, and you are going to hate having in your filmography?’ Because you are still out of sight if you have done something terrible, no one watched it,” says the 48-year-old.
One might think being in the industry all this while, he may have taken a decision which he realised wasn’t wise in hindsight. But Rampal disagrees. “I don’t regret saying no to films, because it’s your instincts. Sometimes, you say no to a film and it goes on to become a blockbuster, and you think, ‘Oh my God, was that a bad choice?’ Every part in a film is predestined, as to which actor is going to play it, even though it was written for a particular actor in mind,” he reasons.
Giving the example of one of his own films, he adds, “The best example is Rock On!! (2008). The part was not for me, it had gone to two different actors before it came to me. That was predestined for me, to be in my filmography. I look at it as purely that.”
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Not just a logistical challenge, but shooting the film was also an uphill task, financially speaking.
“The expenditure was more than normal. But we still took that plunge. We knew that if we achieved this, we would go down in history. We wanted to be the flag bearers. So we took this strategic call. We were like, ‘someone has to get out there and do it’. Pehli baar aisa laga ki industry ke log bahut khush hai. I can never forget this experience,” Bhagnani says.