No regrets turning down Hollywood roles
WE have in recent months seen you at high- profile international events in Cannes, the ‘ Sound of Change’ concert and last week at Royal Ascot. Why is it important for our cinema to be represented on an international platform?
Yes, here we are celebrating 100 years of Indian cinema. Cannes has given us this huge platform, and that in itself is a huge statement. We’re always appreciative of our host’s grace, wherever we may be welcomed, but that does not mean that’s the barometer of India cinema’s placement on the international platform. These are two different things. When you say how has it evolved? Do we recognise the platform that Indian cinema has been given? Of course. And typically India of us, we gracefully acknowledge our host’s grace and we thank you for celebrating us and our cinema.
As a part of my fraternity, I’m not saying a profile in the West is pivotal to our presence. So if you find an audience, great. If not, that’s fine as well, because our cinema finds its audience wherever it’s meant to in the world and our cinema is celebrated as glorious as it is in our own diaspora. But at the same time to any creative individual, creative world or creative facet, the wider the audience the better. You receive a sense of contentment because creativity wants to find its audience. The larger the audience the better. The more pockets in the world, the more interesting and exciting because it just makes it that much more liberating. This makes it that much more liberating for the various facets of creativity to be explored. That’s what it really is. Does that mean that it’s imperative to your sense of being? No. But is it exciting to find a wider audience? Oh yeah. I think any creative individual will give their vote to that.
You are the first commercial star of Indian cinema to really be recognised on a mainstream global platform. How hard or easy has it been for you to win that recognition in Hollywood when it was a world that seemed so inaccessible for Indians outside of the stereotypes?
In terms of finding that first international recognition of my work, coming back to Cannes is such a milestone in my life because it began actually with Devdas. Coincidentally it was the same year that Gurinder [ Chadha] was already talking to me about possibly collaborating, and it just so happened that Bride and Prejudice came after my experience here at Cannes. So if I look at it myopically, they were all probably happening simultaneously at Cannes, and I guess that was the way my life was meant to chart its course, but from a documentary perspective, if you define it in a linear way, it started with Devdas here at Cannes.
It was the first time that the world’s media recognised my work as an Indian actor, received it very, very positively, and I was very thankful for the grace and the appreciation because if you look at Devdas it is a beautiful movie. It is very operatic in its visualisation. It exists in a particular world of our cinema and
to still see that celebrated the way it was globally by this varied audience, whether it was from a critiquing perspective or the international audience here in Cannes, it was very overwhelming positively, and it truly touched my soul that our work was appreciated till this date. Last night, people are like, ‘ Devdas… amazing!’ 13 years since, people still celebrate that work.
Today every major star in Hollywood is clamouring to work with you, but did it need an Indian director such as Gurinder Chadha to cast you in films with Hollywood actors such as Dylan Mcdermott in Mistress of Spices and Martin Henderson in Bride and Prejudice for you to get recognition as a viable star of mainstream film?
I am very, very thankful to Gurinder because that film [ Bride and Prejudice] was such a clever piece of work, because there she was adapting an English classic, making it so human and so normal in that very Indian family atmosphere which is so natural to us, and presenting it with what was recognised as very signature Bollywood, bringing the musical aspect - and it was widely appreciated the world over. Wherever I went, people recognised that. I was amazed at the number of people who had given it [ an] audience.
Even when I was honoured at the Time dinner to have Nicole Kidman turn around and say, ‘ I love that movie and I watched it with my kid’. You have your fellow actors saying they enjoyed your cinema, you have an audience across the globe saying they loved that piece of work, yet back home people thought it was just such a normal Indian movie. But that’s why it was so clever, because here she has taken a classic and made it look so normal and drawn a huge global audience into what is essentially us and our cinema. And that is why the collaborations with Gurinder