You can see this characterization in the film. There is no De Niro. There is only LaMotta.
Because you have completely become the character, it feels like you are playing yourself. And, of course, there are many times when you construct that character with the director. Anurag holds workshops, but let me give you a more mainstream example. In Boney Kapoor’s film Mom, I play a detective who goes by the moniker DK. (This role holds echoes of a character I had played a long time ago on stage in a play called Aakhri Kitab.) When they read out the script to me, I proposed we sculpt the character further so that I could portray it as truthfully as possible. So I suggested making DK mostly bald with a few thin strands of long hair towards the back of the scalp. I put in fake teeth that jut out like the cartoon character Bugs Bunny’s. After some more such layers, DK became unrecognizable. Nobody can really tell this is Nawaz. I asked them to take a picture of me on the phone, so that I could look at it to confirm this. Later, I sat for hours staring at the picture of DK in full make-up, trying to imbibe who he was, what he was, how he felt, what he thought, what he would do next . . . everything so that I could bring him alive on the screen.
The nuances in acting are of the thickness of a single strand of hair. Every tiny movement shows on camera and conveys something. You relax your shoulder and it is a different character, you make it tense and it shows something else. Our cinema is rather verbose with written dialogues. But if you completely understand the essence of a scene, then even fumbling with the dialogues is okay because, guess what? In real life, fumbling is normal. So it is more believable. Like in Badlapur there were no dialogues in the script. Dialogues were prepared on the spot. And look at Bypass where there are no dialogues at all! If thoughts are connecting in the script, then the actor can keep talking irrespective of dialogues. Like, for example, if the situation that is explained to the actor is that he wants to pee and the toilet is 10 kilometres away and he is walking there with his friend, he doesn’t need dialogues. He can explain his desperate urgency to his friend, creating comedy that everyone can relate to. Then he could stretch it all the way to the government—how the government needs to create more toilets and why it is not constructing them because it is too busy in all kinds of corrupt activities, and thereby create political satire and whatnot. He can go on for half an hour talking just about this and keep the audience entertained, without being given dialogues, simply by being in the situation. Our folk artists were masters at this. We have butchered this traditional gift. In our industry, most of the time writers simply give out lines.
Another thing I have never quite understood is this quintessential Bollywood concept of the hero. Bhai, we know that a hero is somebody who does something extraordinary in an ordinary situation. That’s it. In our industry, it is completely the opposite. He is already beautiful, wears beautiful clothes, grooms himself beautifully, has a beautiful chick, dances beautifully. He seems to be more of a peacock than a hero!
When I played a gullible guy in a masala movie like Freaky Ali, there was another element altogether. This character is a simpleton who happens to become a celebrated golfer. He starts out selling underwear on the street. He is humble, he has no ego. He does not think much. His thought process is limited. But Nawaz’s mind goes beyond Ali’s, right? This is exactly what I needed to remember. And I did constantly remind myself while playing the character to curb my own mind. I should not be more intelligent than Ali. This is very subtle and, like most subtle things, very powerful. This is also the reason why intelligent actors playing characters who are birdbrains so often fail. Their portrayals don’t seem believable. A good actor must become completely stupid when required.
In real life too, you need to follow the process. So if you know you have a shoot in a fortnight, you have to become the character. There is a process wherein people go into a trance, dressing like the character, bathing or not, becoming unkempt or not, etc., basically whatever the character demands, and go into a sort of trance. People in our industry call this ‘method acting’. But this is completely wrong. This is not what method acting is. It can actually drive you psychotic, to the brink of collapse.
Like, for example, there was a film by Ram Gopal Varma, and a very good actor was playing a bandit in it, sort of like the notorious dacoit Veerappan. I happened to have a small role in the film as well and so went to Ramu’s office and saw him there. The protagonist had long, dishevelled hair and was dressed like Veerappan—he had a menacing vibe about him. He was prancing around in a very intimidating manner, and every now and then breaking the daunting silence he himself had created, by shouting, ‘Oye, behenchod!’ This was accompanied by vigorous gestures of anger.
Since I had just
