I am not Bollywood's Al Pacino: Naseer

Speaking at the Osian film fest, Naseeruddin Shah says Bollywood need not look to the West for recognition.

Labels and connotations do not impress veteran actor Naseeruddin Shah, who said he gets irritated if someone addresses him as "the Al Pacino of Bollywood".

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"Why these labels? Why do we have to look to the West to recognise our work?," Shah asks reporters at the Osian's Cinefan film festival in the Capital.

"Often people abroad ask me if I am the Al Pacino of Bollywood. Why can't they apply the same to their actors? Why don't they call Dustin Hoffman the Om Puri of Hollywood?," Shah said after a screening of Rajat Kapoor's film Mithya that stars him along with Ranvir Shorey, Neha Dhupia and Saurabh Shukla.

Shah said the Oscars did not matter much to him. "I don't attach any importance to the Oscars," he said.

He said the spurt in the new-age movie movement in India proved that there is no shortage of talent in the country.

"But we need good writers and producers. We have too many hacks who are only capable of rehashing old stuff and this will go on as it is a great money-making machine," Shah said.

As long as good movies are made, he said, there will be good audiences. "The audience in India has never ever rejected genuinely good movies. The appreciation for such films is immense."

Shah said multiplexes coming across the country had provided an outlet for offbeat films.