Emraan Hashmi reveals his own thoughts on his personal 'film palette'

Emraan Hashmi recently spoke at length about the issues surrounding Bollywood and the struggles that actors face when they step out of their acting comfort zone when trying out new characters.

He revealed during an interview that the major chunk of his audience is divided into two parts, those who wish for him to venture out and experiment with his talent, and those that wish for him to stay within the confines of a cozy comfort zone, for their own satisfaction.

Hashmi has a plethora of films in his portfolio, from the Murder and Jannat franchise, to Once Upon a Time in Mumbai, Shanghai, and Ghanchakkar.

During his conversation with PTI, the actor revealed, “It is a struggle to balance the audience. They always want to see you in a particular thing and then when you step out of that, a lot of people get upset about it. This is very true to our audience, not international audience.”

Hashmi revealed, that over the course of his career, there have been some “set notions” imposed upon what a leading man can, and shouldn’t do within India. He qouted: “In the end of Ghanchakkar when I am getting beaten up, the audience was angry, a lot of distributors said why are you doing this? I was being honest to the character.”

“But this is how Indian films are. They want to see the hero do certain, stereotypical things. Be that hero who does that time and again, I find that exhausting. That’s why, I took a departure,” he added.

Looking back at his career over the years, Hashmi embarrassingly reveals that a lot of films which he did on the silver screen are not films that he would ever watch himself as an audience member.

He said: “My palette of films that I watched weren’t remotely close to the ones I did. So identification with some films was difficult, but I took it upon myself that I have to be truthful to the material.”

It has become increasingly difficult for him to step out of his audience imposed image. Revealing why he feels some actors get themselves embroiled within a net such as this, he stated, “Initially in your career, you are not in a place to choose films. The films choose you. If they are successful, it has to be done to death. That’s how the trade functions, they see a safety net, a cash flow so they juice it out. Sometimes you play to that and then after a certain amount of success, you want to get out of that trap. But they don’t want you to get out of the trap, they constantly want you to bring in the moolah with that."