Bollywood star Siddiqui takes ‘free speech’ hero to Cannes
WHEN Indian actor Nawazuddin Siddiqui walks the red carpet at Cannes he may take a moment to ponder just how far he has come and where he is headed.
In just over a decade, Siddiqui has gone from a struggling bit-part actor worried about finding food to an acclaimed international star coveted by directors for his versatility across all genres.
“When your film gets selected in a good category, you feel confident that you are on the right track and your choice of films is good,” Siddiqui told AFP in an interview.
His latest film sees him play the lead role in Manto, a biopic about the troubled life of Indian-- Pakistani writer Saadat Hasan Manto. The movie, directed by Nandita Das, has been selected for the Un Certain Regard category of the film festival which opens Tuesday.
“I enjoy Cannes because it is such a big and prestigious platform. It’s a whole world revolving around films,” said Siddiqui.
“Manto was an honest man who wrote what he saw. He was transparent and there was no hypocrisy in his life,” said Siddiqui, who is 43.
“He thought about things in the 1940s which we fail to see or think about even today. He spoke and wrote the truth, and truth never gets old. To play him you have to be truthful too,” he added.
Siddiqui is one of Hindi cinema’s great success stories — a poor man, who from humble beginnings in a village in Uttar Pradesh state, defied the odds to make it big in Bollywood after moving to Mumbai in 2000.
“I spent 10-12 years struggling. My lowest point was to find food and survive. Now I can do the work according to my choices,” he said at his office, a collection of posters from his biggest hits hanging on a wall behind him.
After Manto, Siddiqui will be seen in the Netflix adaptation of Vikram Chandra’s novel “Sacred Games”. It releases on July 6 and will be the site’s first original Indian series.
He is currently shooting for what he describes as his “most difficult” character yet — divisive Mumbai politician Bal Thackeray, who died in 2012.
Thackeray founded and led the Hindu far-right Shiv Sena party, which has campaigned against Muslims and sought to bar migrant “outsiders” from Mumbai. Siddiqui is both.
“Credit goes to the family and the producer who must have realised I could do justice to this complex and difficult role,” he said.