My journey to stardom was challenging: Irrfan Khan

My journey from Salaam Bombay to Jurassic World has been challenging says Irrfan Khan, who recently starred in Talvar and can be seen in this week’s Jazbaa.

After a brilliant performance in Talvar Irrfan Khan has established himself as one of the popular stars of Bollywoood. The journey to reach this stage has been long and challenging he says.

Irrfan Khan made his debut in Mira Nair’s Salaam Bombay. (IANS)

Irrfan, 48, made his debut with a small role in Mira Nair’s 1988 National Award winning film Salaam Bombay. It was, however, Tigmanshu Dhulia’s 2003 cult film Haasil which got Irrfan into limelight, earning him rave reviews for his negative role.

“Audience wasn’t ready when Haasil released. People still watch it and relate to the film, especially today’s youngsters. “But during that time audience wasn’t prepared because they didn’t have a place to watch these kind of films. Then multiplexes came and changed everything, pulling in the middle class crowd. Haasil was ahead of its time... So we had to wait a long time to do our kind of work,” he told reporters here.

Following his career defining 2003 film, Irrfan worked in movies like Maqbool, The Namesake and Life in a Metro.

Watch Jazbaa trailer here

Youth is changing bollywood. They’ve seen international cinema and they want our cinema to be commercial and yet tell the stories of society.”

This year alone, Irrfan has starred in movies like drama comedy Piku, Hollywood blockbuster Jurassic World, murder mystery Talvar and his upcoming Sanjay Gupta directed action drama Jazbaa.

The actor credits the change in the audiences taste for giving him the leg room to experiment with different kinds of movies.

“People are not interested in watching a boring social film. They want to watch a film which reflects social issues yet entertains. Youth is very intelligent. They don’t need to be spoon fed, they say ‘don’t consider us morons. But we underestimate them.”