Failure is not the end of my career: Anupam Kher
Anupam Kher has always impressed when facing the arclights, but his stint as a director wasn’t greeted with the same enthusiasm. After his directorial debut, Om Jai Jagadish (2002), starring Waheeda Rehman, Anil Kapoor, Abhishek Bachchan, Fardeen Khan and Mahima Chaudhry among others, didn’t fare well, he never tried his hands at direction.
“There are so many factors in today’s time that decide if your film will work or not. Though Om Jai Jagdish didn’t do well at the box office, today I meet so many people who have seen the film on TV and loved it. We can’t judge a film by how well it has done at the theatres,” Anupam says.
In his career spanning over 35 years he has starred in 400 odd films, but the actor reveals he still gets anxious on the release day of his films. “Yes, I do get anxious. I just wish for the film to be received well by the audience. It takes a lot of effort to make a film, not just of actors but of technicians, the cinematographer and of many other people,” he says.
Though there are hits and misses in everyone’s career, Anupam says he has never treated failure as the end of his career. “I don’t take the actor in me or the person in me so seriously. I feel we are here to enjoy our life and do our best work. With work comes more work and it keeps me alive. If the film, in which I have acted, doesn’t do well, I move on to the next. The pursuit is to do better. Failure isn’t the end of my career. A long time back, I understood that failure is an event, never a person,” he says.
And the actor says he has always risen above failure. “When you aren’t scared of failure and are an eternal optimist, it is a lethal combination. Then you can make any choice because you aren’t thinking and treading carefully. I have taken life as it is. I’ve enjoyed it all. Woh rasta hee kya jisme hurdles and speed breakers naa ho. You will never realise what difficult is if you have a smooth run,” he adds.