Akki on Jaan-e-Mann

Courtesy: IndiaFM
Tuesday, October 17, 2006
Jaane-E-Mann appears like one crazy ride
Jaane-E-Mann is all about a triangle love story between a dude and a nerd. Salman is the dude. I play the nerd. Priety Zinta is the girl we both fall in love with. The movie starts from 1970s and goes ahead another 15 years in the film. I have three kinds of looks in the film. This nerd who was in college eventually becomes an astronaut in NASA. How his love story takes shape forms the crux of Jaan-e-mann.

How would you define your character in the film?
Definition I have already given. Like I said earlier, I play a nerd. It was quite difficult to do that. It was not an easy job to be playing a person rejected by every woman, who does not have a date with him. Something like this never happened to me, so it was quite a difficult job to play a character like this. I managed it, thanks to my director who had confidence in me and also to the producer who believed I could perform this very heavy duty and difficult role.

It is your second film with both Salman and Preity. How has the experience been so far?
Priety, yes this is my second film. I started with Sangharsh. It was the film where I started taking acting seriously. It was a film where I took acting as a real profession. Earlier I used to act to earn money. But with Sangharsh things changed. Me and Preity have both evolved and turned out in different ways. She has gone ahead and has become a very great actor. She got all the support from Karan Johar, Aditya Chopra. She belongs from that school and I am still waiting to get admission in that school. I fondly call her Basanti because she keeps on talking all the time. She has a lot of things to talk about. Any topic you give her, she has a lot of things to say. I really enjoy working with her.

Salman is a great co-actor. We enjoy working with each other and I feel we share a great chemistry together on screen. People liked us in our first movie and will like us again here.

Anupam Kher has a complete make over. He plays a dwarf. What do you have to say about that?
Yes he is playing a dwarf. It was a very hard role for him. Not only to enact but it was physically very hard to play a dwarf as all throughout he had to walk on his knees wearing green colored socks so that they could graphically remove the leg. It was quite a difficult task to walk on the knees and even dance and say your lines and even remember your lines. Hats off to Anupam Kher, he has done it brilliantly. I was amazed as to how he could do it and how he could perform it.

Tell us about Shirish Kunder
Very rarely you come across with a new director who is a genius. Shirish is a genius. The way he has conceived the film is extra ordinary. I would proudly say that this man with this film is going to change the level of Indian cinema. He is going to bring it to the next level. So I am very proud of being a part of Jaan-E-Mann.

Did you help him editing the film?
No he himself is a very good editor. He did not require my help. I don't think so he needed my assistance.

You now seem to be Sajid Nadiadwala's new lucky mascot. Mujhse Shaadi Karogi, now Jaan-E-Mann and you are also doing Hey Baby for him. What do you feel?
Me and Sajid are basically school friends. We go back a long way. He was my senior in Don Bosco. From there I never thought I would one day come in this line and one day meet Sajid Nadiadwala and he would make a film with me called Waqt Hamara Hai. Then we had a little break, we did not work with each other for at least about 9 years. After that we started Mujhse Shaadi Karogi. It was great and I am glad that we started working again.

Tell us about the music of Jaan-E-Mann.
Music is doing very well. It has some different kind of music. It has got Ajnabee which is a different song from the routine Hindi songs. It has been done in a very different way. The orchestra is different. The song has been recorded in Chennai with some different technicians coming and recording with the help of Anu Malik who is the music director of the film. There was a lot of input from Shirish while recording the songs.

So Ajnabee is your favorite track?
Yes Ajnabee is my favorite track.

What would be the USP of Jaan-E-Mann?
In Mujhse Shaadi Karogi, Salman and I made people laugh. This time we will make people cry. The USP would be me and Salman coming together again. The USP also is the characters we both play in the film. It is from two different aspects of life. One is a rock star and one is a nerd. Both coming together, having a love story in between for the beautiful girl Preity. This complete package is the USP of the film.

You started of as an action hero, and now you are considered one of the finest actors for romantic leads and comic leads. A conscious decision or just happened?
Well I was actually bored being labeled as just an action hero. So I decided that I need a change. I desperately need it. It was a risky job to switch over because if one actor is labeled in one particular genre then it becomes really difficult to switch over. But I succeeded. A lot of people told me not to try it since everything was going well for me but I was very fortunate to come out of it and get into something different from my image.

Will we see you soon in an action movie?
Yes, definitely yes. I will be doing an action movie very soon. I do want to make a very hi-fi action movie and dedicate that film to my son.

Don is releasing with Jaan-E-Mann. Any sense of competition?
Well Don is a different kind of film. Jaan-E-Mann is different. Don is already a hit concept. It has a lot of action and is different genre from Jaan-E-Mann. So there is no competition from each other. Both the films are releasing during the festive season. So I don't see any point having competition.

What is your expectation from Jaan-E-Mann?
I am expecting quite a lot from Jaan-E-Mann for a simple reason. I earlier told you about the USP of the film, the look of the film, that producer Sajid has left no stones unturned to make the movie look beautiful. We have a good product and I am very confident of this film.

One of the publications said something about you and Nana Patekar. An alleged fight was mentioned. Could you clarify?
There is nothing to clarify because there is nothing that happened there.

Your future projects
Bhagam Bhaag, Namaste London are the two movies which will be my next releases.

You did an album sometime back. Will you take singing as a profession?
No. I did that for a good cause. I am not a good singer at all. I just did it because the song was in my mind and I wanted to bring it ahead and put it in front of the world what is there in my mind. It is not an album but just one song that I sang. The whole album belongs to Sukhbir. He has done the music and his father has sung it.

Will Akshay Kumar produce or direct a film?
No. I just want to be happy.

Recent Stories
Arjun Rampal speaks on Don
"I find D and Risk very romantic films" - Randeep Hooda

Archives