I want to make life look beautiful: Irrfan Khan

This week's episode of CNBC-TV18's special show Beautiful People has Anuradha SenGupta interviewing her favourite actor, Irrfan Khan.

As an actor, he uses his craft to breathe life into stories and makes the people he plays interesting, real, even heroic and sexy.

His portrayal of the human condition in all its nuances makes life look beautiful. "And that is what I want to do in my professional and personal life," said Khan.

Below is the edited transcript of Irrfan's interview with CNBC-TV18's Anuradha SenGupta. Also watch the accompanying video.

Q: "I am tired of the flattery and I cannot take it anymore because really how humble can I look"- is that what you want to say?

A: No, flattery sometimes makes you embarrassed but you feel nice. What you said about - He makes life look beautiful - this is exactly what I want to do in personal life and in my professional life.

Q: 'Paan Singh Tomar', your last release - I think the film is great in terms of the story and the story telling. What I found interesting was that you managed to play Paan Singh Tomar even as the gocky, gangly teenager who wanted to have a good meal and became a sportsman, enjoying the army. I didn’t have problem adjusting to the fact that you were playing a man considerably younger than you are, isn’t it? Was that the key challenge for you where this film was concerned?

A: Differing your age in the film of the character - that’s not so difficult. There was a portion which was about when Paan Singh was 18 years old - that was difficult for me. So I told Tigmanshu that I didnot want to play that chunk. Although it’s not there in the film now, it was edited but that was the portion I was little worried about. Because at 18 years everything is different. If I would have played that then you would have said you haven’t played the age properly. You need to see what you can play. You can play older but to become younger, it is very difficult.

Q: Is ageing an issue, is playing younger now difficult, and does it also reduce the options that you have?

A: In this Hindi film industry, definitely it reduces options because everybody is trying to push their age, they are trying to keep their younger version alive through different means and that’s a kind of limitation in our industry. That doesn’t let you grow old gracefully. Even in Hollywood it is so but at least in Hollywood, they write characters for older people as well. But here it is difficult. You have to keep looking younger and that is sometimes a burden.

Q: But it wasn’t a challenge when you were doing Paan Singh Tomar like you said because you picked the age which you could play comfortably?

A: Yes, in the sense I didn’t have to do anything for that. I know my face, I know I can look this way. It is a very interesting age where I could play 50 and I could also play 20. But there are roles, which I have missed because I dont look younger like Mira Nair’s ‘Reluctant Fundamentalist’ and I really wanted to do that character. But I am not that younger. I told her, let’s explore plastic surgery; I will do anything for the role. But then maybe I was not destined to play that role.

Q: I remember something you previously said to me that if the box office doesn’t work for a film, it limits the budgets that you work with and therefore it limits the kind of story telling and the scope of the narrative. I felt that happened with Paan Singh especially the bits that happened in Japan and all the historical bits. The intimate historical bits are fine but anything that is, the race, the travel, the milieu - that begins to look, Hollywood gets that right, isn’t it and we haven’t yet figured that out. Would you agree?

A: Also because the film had a limited budget and they could only spend that much on my name. If other actor would have been playing - then those portions would have looked something else. So that is the limitation and that’s why you keep on working on your viability. That is why your fight is two-way; finding the stories which you want to do and also trying to make them more viable, trying to make them more profitable. So you are fighting two battles.

Q: So then it must be very gratifying that Paan Singh Tomar was received the way it is because it just means more will happen, isn’t it?

A: Again, it is two-ways; one is that Paan Singh worked for me and other thing which is very important to me is the real Paan Singh’s story is out now. Now people know about him. Earlier when we were doing the research, there was not a single alphabet on Paan Singh’s name on the internet, not a single thing.

My friend was posted in Dholpur and he was Deputy Superintendent of Police (DySP) at that time, I asked him about this character called Paan Singh Tomar who was national champion and steeplechase runner and if he could  find out something about him? He couldn’t find out anything. Now there are people who are proudly saying that my father was killed by Paan Singh.

For more on this tête-à-tête click on the accompanying vidoes