I am not comfortable kissing on-screen: Emraan Hashmi

In an exclusive interview, Bollywood’s dark horse Emraan Hashmi spills the beans on everything from his career to his famous kisses to his forty-plus seniors.

The location is pretty exclusive. It’s the beautiful boulevard where two of Bollywood’s most illustrious families — Dilip Kumar and the late Sunil Dutt’s family — reside. Between these two bungalows is Reshma building, home to Bollywood’s rising star, Emraan Hashmi.

The building, which has been Emraan’s residence for the last 30 years, is well-known in the area, but thanks to his legendary neighbours, it is still inconspicuous. Not that Emraan lacks a lineage of his own. Mahesh and Mukesh Bhatt are his uncles and Emraan is a star in his own right, part of films produced not only by his family, but also people like Karan Johar and Ekta Kapoor. Once known as ‘the serial kisser’ because of his penchant for somewhat risqué movies, he’s now being seen as a serious actor, with films like Ek Thi Daayan, Ghanchakkar and Ungli in hand, plus a movie with Danis Tanovic, the director of the 2001 Oscar-winning film, No Man’s Land.

How did this transformation take place? Over to Emraan. Are you enjoying your new kiss… to success, I mean?
It started off as a clumsy peck and now it’s become a full-blown French kiss! Yes, I am enjoying my new success.

Why did you want to become a movie star?
I wanted to be famous and do good work. More importantly, I expected a lot of money. I didn’t know the other implications.

Did you ever interact with your immediate neighbours, Dilip Kumar and Sanjay Dutt?
I look up to them, but there was never much interaction. Even though I was from a film family, I remained pretty disconnected from all the filmi jazz. Though my uncles were in the business, I hadn’t been on a film set before I started assisting them. It was an unfamiliar world that I had only seen in movies in theatres or on DVDs. Therefore my interactions were limited in this regard.

You were called the one-man-industry of medium budget films, mostly made by your uncles’ company, Vishesh Films. But now that you have stepped out, the battlefield is bigger, with a lot more players. Are you ready?
I don’t see myself competing with any of them. I have different ideologies. There are certain similarities between the industry and me in terms of functioning, but at the same time, I have my own set of pronounced rules that I abide by. If I do what everyone does, then I won’t be able to do anything different. There are a lot of rules that I don’t abide by, don’t understand and don’t want to follow.

Please explain.
Everyone from the industry perspective wants to play by the familiar melody; everyone is chasing a wonder figure — the Rs 100/200 crore club. And when you chase that, you cannot take risks. The more you are in that race, the more formulaic and uni-dimensional you get. Having said this, I also want to chase figures by doing some formulaic films, but at the same time, I also want to do a certain parallel to mainstream kind of cinema that changes the terrain. I will always take risks as they have always paid out in my career. So I am not competing. That is my point.

How’s the view from the top?
It’s a decent view, but there’s always a better view as there are lots more levels to climb. It’s a long way to the moon.
But I am enjoying my journey, it’s fun. I have realised that I have reached a certain point in my career where I can start doing things that I wanted to do and steer my career whichever way I want. The choices you get to make at this stage are something I always wanted, compared to five years back, when even though the efforts were the same, the choices were limited. Honestly, I don’t know which level I am on right now. Lots has changed since I started. But the fear of failure is still strong in me.

A sign these days of having arrived in Bollywood is lots of endorsements. What do you say to that?
People with a rom-com image get more endorsements. I haven’t done the traditional running around trees or the
chocolate boy romance. And I cannot take up just any offer that comes to me. In the past I was inundated with offers for lip balms and condoms. I didn’t do them. All those were because of the films I was doing.

But a lot has changed in the last seven years. I know endorsements are great and easy money. It’s just two-three days of work and you get huge money. But in my case there’s no particular desperation, although I am open to endorsing a good and solid product.