Nawazuddin makes a mark on the Croisette

Nawazuddin Siddiqui has been on a roll of late but the National School of Drama-trained actor still has his feet firmly on the ground.

The boy from Burhana, Muzaffarnagar who made it big in Mumbai has pivotal roles in two of the three Indian films playing on the Croisette this year – Ashim Ahluwalia’s Miss Lovely and Anurag Kashyap’s two-part Gangs of Wasseypur. He is enjoying all the attention that he is attracting here.

“When I was working on Miss Lovely, I could see that it would turn out to be special. Ashim Ahluwalia has distinct approach to filmmaking,” says the actor whose stocks went soaring after his performance in Sujoy Ghosh’s Kahaani released earlier in the year.

About Anurag Kashyap’s style, Nawazuddin says: “He leaves the actors alone once he has explained a scene. But I had trouble catching the essence of my character in Gangs on the first two days. Anurag told me not to act, just feel. Things fell into place.”  

Explaining why he has confined himself to the off-mainstream space so far, the actor says: “I do get offers from Bollywood, “but I am far keener on doing the kind of films I am doing at the moment as I can play lead roles in them. If I don’t do these films now, I might not get a chance in the future.”

In Gangs of Wasseypur, a vendetta epic set in the coal town of Dhanbad, Nawazuddin essays the role of Faizal Khan, who thirsts for revenge after his father was gunned down by his enemies.

Nawazuddin has several independent films lined up with first-timer directors – Ritesh Batra’s Lunchbox, Amit Kumar’s Monsoon Shootout and Shlok Sharma’s D End.

The actor is also in a segment of a collaborative film titled The Owner, which is in the Cannes Film Market. Directed by 25 different directors from 14 countries, the film is about a backpack stolen in Sao Paolo. It goes from one city to another, including Mumbai.

The Mumbai segment of The Owner has been helmed by Neha Raheja Thakker, with award-winning filmmaker Shivajee Chandrabhushan as director of photography.

Nawazuddin shifted to Mumbai in 2000 to try his luck in cinema. “It was a long, painful struggle,” he says.

The acting bug bit him a little late in life, but once it did, there was no escape. “I got hooked to acting. At NSD, I appeared in plays written by the likes of Anton Chekhov and William Shakespeare in the process of honing my skills,” he says. It is all paying off now.