Acting Profile

Being a celebrity actor is not the aim, but to be the part of a good film realising a character that probably suit me is definitely one of the aims. I made this profile to send it to a friend who asked me for stills for a character. Thought I will make it appealing for him, even if it may not serve his purpose. I used a few stills with different colour schemes to suit the mood and expression - like authoritative green, cool blue, brutal red, earthy brown, vintage grey etc.- as used effectively in cinema to create mood.

I did the first bit of acting in school Nirmala when a set of seniors didn't find a candidate to do an old farmer woman character. They found me beside their makeup room and forced me to do that character. I didn't have any dialogue to deliver but stay at one corner doing the action of harvesting paddy. Thus stayed on stage for five minutes covered with mud holding a sickle.

The second stage performance was for a comedy play at Arena multimedia during graduation days in Hyd. Ironically it was again a female character but as the central character Anarkali. In the climax of play I had to throw away the Anarkali outfit and show that I am a man who came as an actor for their play. I just had to be quite natural on stage being freaky and goofy and it was hilarious to make people laugh. It worked well. I remember my best friends then, Yamini and Dileep following me to the changing room laughing and making fun. I remember Yamini shouting "Please let me in, Just want to see Anarkali one more time before he changes". Crazy goofy days. But that wasn't the best remark I had for Anarkali. Almost four years later I went to Hyd for a visit. There were no familiar faces in Arena except for an old maid servant of Arena. She recognized me and the words came from her mouth surprised me a lot, "Anarkali Beta, Kaise ho". (Anarkali son, how r u?). She remembered me as Anarkali, not with my name. Felt so good and gave her a hug. The image given below is of that performance.If you look carefully the old woman who is standing behind my character in brown sari on the steps is her. I found this pic in an old CD and kept it carefully coz of that memory.

I have acted in many of my own short films starting from My Mirror. I did it mainly because cheap benefits like I need not be paying myself for a role, I enjoy doing it and that I am never bored of undergoing any number of retakes to improve. But direction and acting together is really a painful task. The worst is when I have to handle the camera myself too. Well, I feel things are getting better these days and I am trying the best not to fancy doing characters that doesn't suit me but discover new actors around.

Recently at skimstone my friend Chris Hall forced me into a funny character called Lord Mongomery Smithers as his character had a Chaplin shade and he knew very well that I'm a hardcore Chaplin addict. Thankfully it went on well and yesterday for the screening at Newcastle Art Centre, I received good remarks from viewers from North East.Not bad, they laughed for sure.

http://skimstone.org.uk/yac/the-old-code

I really don't know whether I would ever take acting as a career but sure to continue to do it once in a while when someone offer a good character. More than anything else I thoroughly enjoy the process of it. I love the acting workshops at Skimstone and at MCC. Also remember a good day at Marathi Theatre club Sudarshan Rang Manchan in Pune once trying to do theatre exercises with young professional actors there. My director friend Titty told me to stop acting after my first short film 'My Mirror'. After 2-3 years he told me that if I have had a little more height he would have taken me for acting. But interestingly today he msged me in FB that he will have a role for me in a film sometime in future.

If life is to surrender for something then I don't want to live at all. Life might not take me to any heights but it will definitely make me better in confidence as a common man. So let me just act and live the moment now :P