No fear Kapoor

He isn’t tired yet, but soon may be. This is just the beginning leg of promotions for his upcoming movie, Jagga Jasoos, and the pressure of selling may soon take its toll. If he had his way, Ranbir Kapoor would have had one long chat with the many reporters sitting around him at a five-star hotel in Bandra, Mumbai. But, he knows everyone wants their exclusives and is only happy to oblige. He is calm, courteous and so soft-spoken that even the slightest noise would have drowned his voice. “I am an actor and it is the films I do that will do the talking,” says Ranbir, who is also co-producing Jagga Jasoos. “Promotions are just a way to make people aware that my film is releasing. But, if a film is good, there will be word of mouth [publicity]. If people enjoy it, others will come see it. I do not pay too much heed to marketing myself. I don’t need that. The less I am written about, the less I speak about myself, the better it works for me.”

Ranbir, 34, has avoided being typecast ever since his debut film, Saawariya, in 2007. He has always surprised his audience, be it as the singer pining for unrequited love in Ae Dil Hai Mushkil, the urbane, ambitious boy of Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani or the deaf and mute hero in Barfi!. In the long-delayed Jagga Jasoos, which releases on July 14, Ranbir is a detective who has a stammer. And, though the stammering part was tricky, he says it was the delay in release that tested his patience. “The difficult part in Jagga Jasoos was just the time it took. But, I think Anurag Basu as a director helps you so much with your performance, he almost builds it for you,” he says. “He makes your life easier; you just have to surrender to him and believe in him. And, you have to just give him the time he wants. He will do the work for you.”

The feeling, it seems, is mutual. Basu says it is difficult to find likeminded people in the film industry, especially those who understand you completely. When a film’s release is pushed several times, any actor would lose his cool. “But, Ranbir has been calm,” he says. “I was the one losing my temper. I never had any friends in the industry till I met Ranbir.” Basu says he wants to keep working with Ranbir as he is not sure if any other actor would give him such confidence.

This is the duo’s second collaboration, after Barfi!, and a third one, a biopic on Kishore Kumar, is being planned. “We all want to experiment and collaborate with new people, but it is very rare to find an actor who doesn’t fear failure,” says Basu. “Ranbir is among those few actors who have immense faith in their directors and let them do whatever they want.”

Ranbir with his father, Rishi Kapoor | PTI

Says veteran actor Piyush Mishra, who has worked with Ranbir in Rockstar, Tamasha and the upcoming Sanjay Dutt biopic, where Ranbir plays Dutt: “He is ready to learn and doesn’t mind accepting that he lacks something. That’s rare. Bahot khoj-been karta hai [he does a lot of research] to develop his character.”

“It’s my process as an actor [to learn],” says Ranbir. “If I am doing a part and can take any external help to better my craft, to better my job, of course I would do it. It’s an actor’s preparation time.” He learned how to act with a stammer from an acting school in New York. His father, actor Rishi Kapoor, wrote in his memoir, Khullam Khulla, that Rima (Ranbir’s aunt) was surprised that an actor of Ranbir’s calibre was taking acting lessons. “I used to go to New York for New Year every year and I thought that, if I was there for two weeks, I might as well use my time and take an hour’s class and practise the stammering,” says Ranbir. “It can look fake and jarring. I felt that strongly in Ajab Prem Ki Ghazab Kahani [in which his character stammered].”

Through Jagga Jasoos, the Ranbir-Basu duo is trying to recreate the feel and atmosphere of Barfi!. “You know, every director has a world that he creates,” says Ranbir. “Dada created a world with Barfi!, which was a feel-good world where you could smile and have a tear in your eye. We consciously wanted to keep that world going. The story is new, the characters are new, but the feeling is that of Barfi!—a happy, sad, bittersweet kind of world. At the end, you feel inspired, you feel loved, you feel good about yourself.”

This idea could, however, backfire. For instance, director Kabir Khan and actor Salman Khan tried recreating the magic of Bajrangi Bhaijaan in the recent Tubelight, with little success. “You know, there is no fixed formula for success,” says Ranbir. “Everybody has an idea and they spend the next six to seven months of their life trying to make it come alive. If I had the formula that ‘okay, this film will be a success because of this’ then I would probably be the greatest artiste in the world. But, we don’t have that. That doesn’t mean we don’t take risks or push ourselves. Every artiste is allowed that; sometimes you succeed, sometimes you fail. You should be ready to push the boundaries so that the audience gets something it didn’t expect and loves it. I think that is the endeavour.”

Though a couple of his recent films—Besharam and Bombay Velvet, which he worked really hard on—were duds, Ranbir has not been bogged down by failure. “I think I am proud of my failures,” he says. “Whatever I am today is because of my failures. When you have a successful film, all we say is, ‘phew... bach gaye [we’re safe]’ till the next one comes. It is failure that really tests you as a person, as an actor. You pause and see what your life is and where you are going wrong. It motivates and inspires you to do better. I have learned a lot from my failures and take pride in accepting it.”

Though Ranbir is usually reserved, coming out only during a film’s release, his romantic tie-ups often hog headlines. “It used to bother me, but now I don’t care what the media writes about me,” he says. “I don’t want to correct it. I don’t want to clarify. I don’t want to fight. I just want to focus on my work.” He has recently worked with his exes, Deepika Padukone and Katrina Kaif, but he does not think of it as an achievement. “It is all conjecture that the media writes about. We all are actors; we don’t bring our personal baggage to work,” he says. “We are serious about our work; it is all romanticised by the media.”

Ranbir Kapoor | Dabboo Ratnani

On the work front, his recent challenge was oscillating between Jagga Jasoos and the Sanjay Dutt biopic. The switch, he says, is difficult. “That is why actors choose to play one part at a time,” he says. But, as Jagga had been on for so long, it almost became second nature. “It was easy to get into that character,” he says. “Getting into the Dutt character was harder; I had to do a lot of preparation. I had to understand Sanjay Dutt. I had to look and feel like him. But, I really enjoyed that because I was getting an opportunity to play a character that is amazing, and [getting] to work with [director] Rajkumar Hirani.”

However, he did not want to copy or caricature Dutt. “I am not trying to imitate him. I am trying to be him,” he says. “I am trying to tell people a story, which to me is very inspiring. He has not had the greatest life. At the same time, he has had such a great life. It is like science fiction. How can somebody go through so much and still be loved, still be controversial and still remain relevant? It was a big challenge and I really enjoyed working on it. The biggest support is that he [Dutt] has so honestly given his life [for the film] without censoring anything. He has said it how it is, even though it portrays him in a ‘not-so-good light’.”

Ranbir confesses that, had he been in Dutt’s shoes, he wouldn’t have been as honest. He says he would not have been as honest as his father even, who has let out many secrets in his memoir. “I am quite a hypocrite that way. Maybe that’s why I am not on social media, because I can’t be myself,” he says. “I am quite an introvert; I am quite shy. My father is very boisterous and speaks his mind. He is not a hypocrite; he says it how it is. That is amazing, you just have different personalities.”

Apart from the film, Ranbir is also looking forward to quitting smoking. When we tell him that his father wants him to quit smoking, he confesses with a shrug that he hasn’t read his book. “I was always a little wary [of reading the book] because I don’t know how my father perceives me, but I have to read it now,” he says. He quit smoking twice for four months each, but fell off the wagon. “I am struggling with it. It is an addiction and I am not strong enough to control it,” he says. “I have given myself till July 8, which is my mother’s birthday, and hopefully I will quit that day.”