 Do you not like Tom Brady for the same reason you don't like the Yankees? Their greatness, because they're both cheap. Their greatness. Oh, you don't like that his balls were a little under-inflated. That's the reason he's not the goat. That's why I like big big big hefty nuts. Yeah. Yeah. I'm Tom Brady. Um, you are definitely not the goat. I love that story about Meryl Streep though. So funny. Oh, yeah, the goat, when they kept calling it a tale, the old goat knows where to go. Meryl, you know we're not just calling you goat, right? I love, it says a lot about Meryl, that she did think they were calling her the old goat, and she was okay with it, that she's not full of herself. Stop, it's always him, it's always him. But yeah, look it up, Meryl was, she had no idea what the goat was. I got a treat for us, we got an Irfan Khan interview. What? Obviously a previous one, but it's with Film Companion. Obviously. Yeah. So I think it's this, remember that the questions from the audience that we got from Ren Beer? Yes. So I think, even though this is not him answering the question from the audience, this is her interview with him. But it's the same kind of format. Got it. And so he's going to go over career stuff, he's going to go over acting stuff, it's going to be amazing. We can sit and listen to acting, especially by the great Irfan Khan. Yes. He is, it's still so sad. It's one of the saddest losses I've felt for a celebrity. Me too. I'm so thankful for this channel for many reasons, but we got to know him more. Because if he just passed, we'd be like, oh, that was that guy, if we had never seen one. Oh, the guy from Life of Pi, and the Jurassic World. The fact that we got to know him, and his career, and get to watch his work, and realize we've been able to talk to him. I know. But man, anyways, this is going to be amazing. Awesome, awesome. Unless and until you become a good human being, you can never be an actor. You know. So, so, that's not true, actually. But it'll be taken in my life. Irfan, thank you so much for making time for FC Unfiltered. Thank you very much. You know, I read somewhere. Yes, and thank you, this is amazing. I hope this is a way to move with Benefit Yoga. After Shanmila Tagore saw the namesake, she sent you a message saying, thank your parents for giving you both. I swear, sometimes, you know, I've got kind of praise or kind of acknowledgement from people, which was so moving. And there were no compliments. It was like somebody has, you know, just poured their heart out. So, Irfan, what are the choices that you made, that made you the man you are today? Getting bored with oneself. Just to avoid getting bored with oneself. To keep my profession, because I had no other way to keep and engage myself. No other way. I had choices when I was a teenager. You know, I could have indulged in a few things and it could have, you know, engaged me. But somehow, you know, my mind, you know, whatever, it kept telling me that you need to find your space, where you could engage yourself, because I'm terrified of myself. I am not of anger, I'm not anxiety, you know. I get bored with things very easily. And I could never fit into the system, any kind of system. But are there any favorite failures? Oh, yes, there are, there are favorite failures. I won't call it failure, but it was a kind of traumatic experience. Either way, failure, like, you know, when I was seven years old, I was, you know, passionate about flying kites and we were not well-to-do, although I belonged to a feudal family, but my father didn't take anything, so we were still living in a rental house and our terraces didn't have a protection. It was it was, you know, a diva. And in the evening, I was trying to catch a thread from, it was hanging from an electric wire. And, you know, I just was trying to catch it and I fell down. And I broke, you know, all my, this ankle, this, sorry, this stress, stress, and so on. And that took at least two years for me to, you know, to recover, because my father was not there, my father was under, so he was out, so nobody knew what to do. So it stayed like that. Have you been here? No, no, I haven't been here, but it's, I can, you know, I'm okay with it. But I couldn't, you know, stay in it. And then slowly, slowly started losing strength. Again, you know, for the sake of the wrestler, he had to do it straight. So then he used to massage, he used to pull it straight. And that was so traumatic. I told him that's mostly because he was feeling sorry. He would pull it straight. Kids are, you know, they are spontaneous and they don't understand what is quality. And they, you know, they get indulged in making fun of each other. Holy school used to make fun of me. And I, you know, I started getting into my shell. And I, I was as it is, you know, I was, I was a very shy guy. And suddenly, you know, I lost all the confidence and everything, you know, I was just living in dreams at that time. And it, you know, it lost so much of his strength that, you know, I later I thought my past I was like my hand is like this. And I used to pick it up like this. And I used to see. So, so this trauma, traumatic experience in this, you know, being oneself in that so much of a shell. It, it made me realize, made me notice things. You know, I, I used to notice that whatever I am, people are not perceiving it like that. People are not, they don't know what is there inside me or what lies inside me. So when I, when I was aware of this, there was a little kind of organic need for me to come out of myself and do something so that people realize what I am. But how does a child who, who draws up very far away from anything to do with cinema then sort of find the courage to go into say that I want to be an actor and go to drama school. And then I read that, that you were so insecure about the way you look that you would sleep with a pin on your nose. How do you then get past all of that and say, I'm going to make this work? You don't need to tell that, you know. You don't have to sort of pump yourself up. Pump to the inspiration. Sure, this is the kind of thing which I, which I was suffering from when I came to, in the city, in Delhi there was an atmosphere where I could watch international cinema, European cinema. I was introduced to this kind of cinema and that was my, my, lot of source of inspiration and I've learned a lot from, from the movies. When I came to the city, I was almost like in the middle of Monday. Nobody talks about cinema. Nobody discusses. You don't watch interesting cinema. Where do you watch it? The time when I came. So my struggle was to just keep my inspiration going. The first thing I bought from my income was VCR and I was looking for films and that time I realized that this is not my real drive. Otherwise the inspiration would have been there even without watching films. So that time I realized that this is a cultivated interest of mine. I have cultivated it. So I have to keep it up. Keep, keep it going. So I need to buy, buy, buy VCR and I need to watch good cinema so that my inspiration is pumped up. Not myself but saying that I'm a good actor. I should, I should watch actors who, who give me a kind of, you know, post reach there, experience that, explore a character with these, you know, these so many dimensions. Make a character even there. So, so you have a good post but, but you can't keep pumping yourself saying that I'm a good actor. That's it, that's it. That would be a folly I think. It will, it can work for certain, for sure. But it won't work for me. You need something else. I need something else. But there are people who love to say that I love myself and I'm great and it works for them. And, you know, there's no judgment about it that, you know, they're wrong or I'm right. Think of Leo and what's fun to talk about. That was the greatest acting I've ever done. Fun is perhaps the only actor in the world who has worked with both Ang Lee and Anis Basmi. What does that take? Well, I'm still struggling to, to, to see myself as an, as an accomplished actor where I'm playing the craft. I'm still struggling, you know. The thing is a lot of my time is, is, I give a lot of time to Hindi cinema. And here you don't have so many challenges where you can keep polishing yourself as an actor. I go there for four months, three months. Then again I have to come back here, you know. I, I'm still, you know, working on my craft. I'm still not as easy as a model fellow. So, you know, so that keeps you going, you know. That keeps you, you know, you should be that easy. Then you'll start enjoying the, you know, the being an actor. So maybe I'll, I'll reach there very soon. But you said, when you were talking about Hindi cinema, you said that we can live without nuance here. You said what we need more is attitude. So even if you give a superficial performance, it can still work because we're not aiming for nuance. But what does it take to give that superficial performance? Does it require high level of skill? Like what do you do to create that attitude performance as opposed to what you do in the West? That, that is, that's just there. You know, you don't need to work on it. The only work you do is that you don't work too much. That you don't put your own sensibility onto it, onto it and make it liability. So you purposely dumb yourself down? Not dumb, no. Don't, don't, don't research on the, on that character. Don't, don't find its background and, you know, see nuances of its behavior, this and that. You know that this is there to give, you know, a kind of, you know, goosebumps to people, you know. And don't bring in all those shades, man. Don't, don't work too much over it, you know. Just, just, just, just flow with the flow, you know. Have a good time when you're doing this movie. You have related to that humor, you know. You enjoyed that. So go on the sets and have, have fun. Isn't it? And that's it. That's it, you know. And that's how everybody can be the most effortless. There's no one formula which fits into when you, when you're working on a character. There's no one formula which works for every character. Right. You know, you will keep discovering new ways of doing it. That's what you have to discover that each and every character needs a different kind of approach to, to reach him. This is, this, this kind of revelation just happened with me. You know, I was doing a, a, a movie with a, one of my favorite director, Anup Singh. And he narrated the, the story and, and something came, something, you know, I just realized that I cannot work on this character. Because he makes, he's, he's, his narrative is musical. He sees music in everything. Even in your behavior, he sees music, rhythm. His short taking is like that. His way of telling a story is like that. Because earlier for Kissa, I was not ready to do that because too dark a subject. I don't want to fuck myself, you know. It's been two, three months. I don't want to be comfortable with it. But when I saw him the way he was shooting it, suddenly it was not realistic. He said that when... Interesting. Didn't pick it up until he was shooting it. He sings at night. He has thoughts, he has pain. He's not going through that pain. It's there inside him. He's just playing on that pain. He's just projecting in a way that he's also enjoying that pain. So that understanding I had, you know, when I went in this film, in the next film which I did with him recently, in Rajasthan, I didn't work with that character at all. I just went on the sets of black. I used to have great time at night, you know, just a party, this and that. Go there, see the mahal and do it spontaneously. His method is to have fun. The most effortless man we've ever seen. Brilliant. It's not shocking in the lightest that he really is. Sometimes I just show up and do it. Because I'm fucking here. You know, the last time I remember we had done a conversation, you and Kalna had talked to each other. And in that conversation you had said that Bhaatsaab had sometimes directed Bhaatsaab, I'm gandhi acting man. So how is an actor of your caliber purposely do gandhi acting? It's not gandhi, he was not saying gandhi acting. He was saying that you don't personalize it. Make it a jugglery. Make audience say, you know, in this film what happens is an actor will come and do magic and all that will happen. There is a lot of language to work on. The camera is covering it. There is no language in it. The language is flat. So if there is an actor, you will do magic in it. So he was talking about that. Give a superficial hypnotic thing. It was gandhi. He never said that you don't see the king of the house. He said, such a beautiful person. There is a lot of Hindi writing in this part. Is it hard for you to do? Can you do that easily? I don't know how it happened but I was doing two kind of series which are equally popular. Badeya Privat and Chandra Hantha. Chandra Hantha was completely lined by me. I didn't know character research, I didn't know anything. What's that? How you can convincingly say your lines that's all it was about and Badeya Privat was very realistic. So somehow I think my background, my choices helped me. You can juggle between the two. But these stylish words, nobody bought it in the cinema. Although it was popular in series when Jagannath and those characters were very popular. But in the cinema nobody was ready to give me that kind of opportunity. The stylish version of his song. I am thankful to that. I would have miserably got sucked into it and lost my heart. A couple of weeks ago I was talking to Arjun Kapoor and we were trying to address the issue of an actor as a celebrity versus an actor as an artist. And I was saying to him that now actors are not just acting. You are doing award shows, you are doing endorsements, you are doing panel discussions, you are doing television series. Doesn't that distract in any way from being an actor? And he said look in our ecosystem we are actually entertainers and this is all part of being that. Do you see yourself as an entertainer? I do see myself as an entertainer but as far as art is concerned whatever the responsibilities you have just mentioned art doesn't fit in any of those. Art only comes when you start making things personal and when you start reflecting on those things. Life around you, life is around you. Whatever you are absorbing as a human being and then you are somehow communicating that observation. Your own point of view about society, about human beings through those stories if that is not happening then art is not happening. You are just an entertainer, actor, celebrity, whatever you can call it. But artists only happens when you start reflecting, when you start personalizing things. So you can compartmentalize in your head that here I am an entertainer and here I am an artist. Yes, you have to. Otherwise you confuse the story you confuse the other people as well. You confuse the audience as well. When I am doing a film which is just about one-liners I have to deliver one-liners and enjoy it and we shouldn't be skeptical about it. Just have fun, the story is about that. Somebody was telling me about this that he went to meet an actor and he was sitting in his trailer and he was doing all kinds of meetings and the assistant was waiting. Sir, he was in a meeting. He goes back and comes back in maybe 5 minutes and that was meeting. So he was just wondering why is he doing this on the road? It's from business propositions to the future story where to go for picnic where to go for holidays and everything is going on. So that's what you become. If you enjoy that, you enjoy that. It's your personal priority. So you start playing that game and if it suits you, please play that game. Whatever works for you. If I am human also, I am a human. I am a human. I am a human. I am a human. I am a human. I am a human. If I am human, I also talked in interviews about the star system in Hindi. And you said even the most interesting directors will at some point say, in the next film, let me get a star and you used very interesting words. You said it's a very strange feeling. They feel like they almost belong to some kind of a substandard community until they've worked with a star. Is this frustrating for you as an actor or have you just made your peace with it? This may be a helpless at a time at one point in time but there are so many things which could make you helpless and frustrated. That's your again and again challenge how to keep yourself positive and interesting enough for yourself that you can enjoy yourself and you don't let it affect you that much but it happens because you are not bringing in that kind of money one. The other thing is if you are doing something which is not from the copy book, regular which you are doing if you are bringing some new element to your craft which doesn't confine the norms which doesn't confirm the norms rather there is a tendency of the establishment that they get threatened because they couldn't use that. They think what is this new thing? Can I use it if I can't use it? What is it? So there is a kind of strange way of pulling that down bringing it down and it doesn't happen directly but it happens in these kind of you know, where you are not offered you are a very good actor that you can blend in we are making a group if you are not in the group that kind of attitude happens but no big deal you can fight it out you can find your own space you don't need to fight it you just need to create your own space But did you refine your own space? Ever have a sort of dark night of the soul where you just felt like I can't struggle against this anymore? There were times also it was because the way I was reacting to those circumstances I mostly have done movies first time directors making their first films and suddenly I have seen them changing and you know first film was successful and then the next film I wasn't important at all and subconsciously you start banking on this team that you know we both have you know and then you start banking on that person and he starts banking on you and unfortunately that happened so I am out of that game now I don't depend I learn my lesson I said it's your own journey you know it would be unfair on your part to start expecting that you know your journey accordingly one film was very good let him do his own thing and you do your own thing so that was frustrating at that time and before that when I was doing series I used to feel claustrophobic, jealous insecure because my juniors they were getting breaks, they were doing commercial cinema and I was struggling to just get a one minute part in a movie I was doing series everybody used to talk to me talk about me I used to hear that you know when you saw a series called Suffer Suffer was on some channel so he was discussing he was talking to the director who is he? then I used to see him in the morning but I never got I know, I prayed in cinema until the time of right I remember one discussion once we had about 100 crore clubs and he said you know everybody used to say I wrote my films and I did not and if I said I think he was just coming off Jurassic Park with him my mind went about 20,000 crores functioning on another plane completely but I remember him saying that it's just it's just not cool for actors to be discussing my not for me not for me that you know I have kind of benchmark my film that's too boring for me what a what a scale to judge yourself man that you are taking away all the mystery of storytelling it's not a product which you know it's an experience sometimes the stories are not made to make that kind of money there are certain stories which can make money which they wouldn't have imagined their work films which they would have imagined it's an experience where it's a job which has mystery to it which has you know you can't judge a storytelling or a story or those figures figures are just buy and buy story is a life thing it is a life and it interacts with you and you can see physically how it's interacting with you because it's a creation creation cannot be dead and I can give you many examples how story has come and you know nudged me and you know created an atmosphere for me or challenged me and you know you said pancing tomorrow right but I believe it and I can show it to you pancing it around I was getting hurt so many times and so badly and without any rhyme or reason I'm just walking and then the kind of step which I didn't realize suddenly my back was which my back is it's not fragile I've done so many things I'm not weak from my back and I'm playing a cricket and suddenly a ball you know the healthy is a ball you know tennis ball so many incidents happened I told my legament with a very small incident I'm just jumping from here to there and there are stones there and the trouser the one which was here suddenly slipped and came down the one which was here so I I jumped with a gun and as soon as I fell I went there again I was told this was mob slain the whole stone was with a gun so that film was testing me in a different way completely I'll give you one more example because when you know this line you have to leave I was suggested that you go to Turkey and at this time you do your best so we too as well as the security we also as well as the security we were saying that we'll do something so I said tomorrow is 4 pm from 4 am to 7.30 pm so he said yes we'll go there we'll go to the scene we'll do something we'll use the water so you wait in front of the camera the camera went down he went down he was coming on the airport he was coming he was coming he said the gun was shot the camera didn't come it didn't come you know and that's the film you won a national award for and that's the film which exactly behaved what happened to Pan Singh Tumar in his life example he was a talented man he was he made he was national champion and his name was not there at all when he started researching about him there was no record nobody knew him exactly same thing happened the film was made and everybody was loving it before it was released but it was not getting released we were so frustrated after 8 months or 9 months if anybody used to ask me what's happening Pan Singh I said I forgot Pan Singh don't talk to me about it Pan Singh is nowhere he's gone and then suddenly the film came out without any publicity nobody knew that one poster one poster suddenly the other version suddenly the film stood on its own so see the correlation between his life and film how it interacts Mahudra's don't matter it doesn't matter it doesn't matter it doesn't matter worst advice you see being dispensed in Bollywood it was generous from a strange kind of insecure to fall into a kind of formula people who haven't reached there have a kind of a say on how things work and what gives you success and this premature way of understanding things is the kind of folly that without experience you have made a kind of formula that if you do it like this you will do it like this one must interact with oneself and see one's potential and see what is unique about oneself and evolve get evolved as an actor falling into formula is something which can reduce one's possibility and one's uniqueness those are good lines to remember folks always don't fall into formula we always think of you as this very dense serious actor but when I remember reading this interview Roland Joshi from AIB 10 after they shot that amazingly funny video the club song and he said they were all so nervous about meeting you but he said you were all kinds of chill so what do you like but you are not looking I am scattered actually I am scattered and I see every house I try and find a space for myself here I will sit here I will have coffee, I will have tea I will study but those places remain like this I read the script sometimes I am there sometimes the script is in that room I am here in the line I am basically scattered I am not an organization I think I understood most of that when you see actors doing wonderful roles when you see people changing themselves completely and getting into that cannot happen spontaneously you have to work on yourself and diligently work on yourself but which you do I do but when I am not doing characters that time also for me I should be able to keep tuning myself at least because I have done a lot of abusing I abuse myself my body whatever now I am slowed down but I am a very reckless man I used to carry a lot of anger which I have controlled dealt with it peaceful so the whole being is your tool so it becomes a kind of other responsibility or a kind you should enjoy taking care of yourself taking care of yourself also that is what it is to enrich your soul through your job it has to have communication both ways otherwise you are doing just this your job you are killing your possibility that's lovely I have to tell you guys I didn't interview with Irfan and Tom Hanks in photo and I remember Tom Hanks saying something I don't like Irfan because when he walks into the room suddenly I am not the coolest person in the world I thought that was a great line I guess I am going to have to questions my name is Ange I wanted to ask you what is the USP of any actor be created or that is something which is involved yes you create your own USP and start disturbing yourself USP first it is a natural thing to aid or to imitate other actors or to find confidence when you resemble somebody I used to resemble somebody giving this wrong idea that my face is similar to what you are looking for and I used to feel so good about it every actor falls into it I used to copy him I used to take his dialogues I used to tape I used to there is a kind of I resemble this there is a possibility I am not what I am suddenly you want to skip all that process and become what you are looking for so as you start discovering yourself there is a kind of organic style organic you are being you start reflecting on the characters and that is the USP your understanding, your perception becomes your own USP I saw my name is Raj and you have done a variety of characters who they belong to various parts of the world or even various parts of India and how important is the addiction language and you know the way the character speaks to developing the character if the story, if the script demands that then it becomes very important that is what I realized in Mughal at that time I was my second film and what I was doing when I was trying to personalize things I was putting my own way of speaking into I was freshly coming from Hassan and that is what I was doing in Mughal and suddenly I realized that the power of the line has gone as I said in my own words as I diluted it it was not a realistic language it was a constructed language but it has its own music and own power where I did that the power is gone and I realized then I stuck to what Vishal has written how he is becoming famous and has changed you as a person for example you talked a little bit about how you had anxiety so would you say that you're a happier person now that you're successful why do you ask this are you asking it to understand that if one becomes popular or known does it make you happy yeah that's exactly from your perspective do you expect that as a person no it depends what you take of it sometimes popularity or fame can destroy you personally with me it has healed me it has because I don't look at popularity just popularity because my focus is not just popularity is again byproduct what you're doing is much more important for me and that doing brings the popularity so it's a byproduct what you're doing to your job will bring a kind of whatever it will bring to you so what relationship you have with your job is it satisfying you if that is satisfying you then everything will fall into place hi sir you said playing characters excite you playing the most exciting and challenging character you played till date these are two things exciting and challenging there were some characters that were challenging but were very painful very painful and I was just mentioning that in an interview I did a character in a series called entreatment it was I didn't know he was in that I was playing a mentally disturbed person and the kind of writing it had was a very complex character and his age was like 54 or 56 whatever my life didn't have that kind of complication so where do I bring all those elements to fit into this this outline of this character that was really painful for me what all I was doing to myself to appear that I am as this character so the challenge was there but that experience was not not enjoyable it was painful so when the shooting was over I literally screamed as if I won the work up and everybody was surprised what happened to me and I'm out I remember the life but I carry this this thick which I have to learn in few days which was like I am giving exam just reminding you of examination day so there are exciting characters like Pansi and other characters you want to keep you want to keep them in your being you always remember them fondness and bond so Pansi was one of the characters that you did thank you so much Pansi thank you and I'm going to remember your words good questions too really good questions and once again I'm sorry I was told this was I mean it was mostly hit there was certain segments that obviously I would have loved to and no one would even say jokes that he said it's how Indians speak obviously speaking in English speaking his own language I wish I would have known what he said grateful we got as much English as we did to understand it but man yeah he wasn't surprising at all some of his answers the fact that box office makes no difference the money doesn't make a difference both in terms of what it makes and what you're paid he's like they don't measure that don't talk about that I loved when he was asked the question about fame I wanted to know why she asked the question because it's very true because there are people who pursue things because they want the fame and the fame is what they think is going to give them the satisfaction and for some it is how much truth is there for Lady Gaga as I live for the applause there may have been a lot of truth in that and then there's other people who it becomes a poison for them and then there's other people who like Irfan and I think part of it I don't want to put words in his mouth but it's possible that for him the link of the fame was commiserate to the level of success he had in the art form he likes to do so that the more fame that he got commiserate to the work it brought a healing sense of affirmation to the fact that I'm doing what I love doing and people know about it versus I need the fame for my own sense of self-worth he is definitely not the latter an incredible human being the whole effortless style to his approach to art which makes it the most that's the thing we've always said if you've seen any of our reviews the word to describe Irfan is effortless and the fact that he's kind of confirmed that this is how I do it not always obviously so he says there are certain roles that you have to kind of really dig yourself and dig deep and do the fact that his process is just effortless a lot of times the fact that his process with some roles is none and many of the greatest teachers that I've ever heard teach or read what they've taught they'll tell you at the end of the day after you've learned everything you've learned forget it you really do need to do that but he's taking it a completely different direction in terms of many times and it shows in his work I do nothing I don't create backstory I don't think about what I'm going to do for substitution I don't try to figure out what is my why, what's my motivation in this I simply take the words from the page and I do what I do and then I'm done and I feel good about it and it shows that's like I remember when we first learned from him his approach to being exactly the same that when you should be the same person before action and after cut that you are in between that there's no putting anything on and just doing something as simple as background work one day I recognized wow it's really easy as an actor to fall prey especially in film to the tension that builds there's a tension that builds on set okay everybody quiet please stop moving around rolling okay speed quiet on set get camera one ready camera two ready and slate and action there's a tension that's building up to that and to be able to just be speed and action so that's your fun it's the best he's the best he's the best man yep it's so great to be able to speak with him yeah there's a lot of people life's not fair a lot of people still hear that shouldn't be and a lot of people that aren't that should and I oh man just to hear more of his wisdom and see more of his work he's missed that was great more there was anything that he said you feel like we need to know you can let us know down below what he said obviously what should be our next earphone film we're gonna watch everything he's done before we are dead hopefully but let us know other earphone videos whether it's interviews clips whatever everything and if there's a video of him just having a snack on set just anything anything he's ever done that's been captured on film or audio send it this way down below