Emraan was in two minds before taking up 'The Dirty Picture'

Directed by Milan Luthria, the film is inspired by controversial south Indian actress Vijayalaxmi, popularly known as Silk Smitha.

"Generally, I like playing the protagonist. I am a very selfish actor. I don't like sharing screen space with others. So, I had this thing in mind whether I should take this film or not, as I'm not a protagonist and Vidya will get more screen footage," Emraan told PTI in an interview.

"Then I thought, when I would see the film, I would have regretted not being a part of a great film. I do know that the role is not that substantial enough, like what I had in 'Murder 2' or 'Jannat' or 'Raaz'. I liked the space and the world created in this film, so, for those selfish reasons, I did the film," he said.

'The Dirty Picture' goes back into the era of 1980s, especially the Tamil cinema and shows the highs and lows of an actress-dancing star.

In the film, Vidya essays the role of Silk Smitha. Besides Emraan, Tusshar Kapoor and Naseeruddin Shah are also part of the movie, produced by Ekta Kapoor, that will release on December 2.

In his six-year-long career so far, Emraan has given quite a few hits at the box office, most of which were more or less solo films including 'Jannat', 'Murder', 'Zeher', 'Gangster', 'Murder 2' and others.

"I prefer solo hero films...like I said I am a selfish actor. It is not like I will do only such films (solo) and not deviate from that.

"It is not like I won't do films that have more stars. Like I did 'Dil Toh Baccha Hai Ji' and then I would be doing Dibarkar Banerjee's 'Shanghai', which have two-three actors with me. I did the film, because I liked the subject and the character," Emraan said.

The 32-year-old actor, also known as Bollywood's serial-kisser', plays the role of one of the three men in the actress' life, in the film produced by Ekta Kapoor.

"I play a movie director, who believes in artistic cinema. In all my films I have romanced all my heroines... there is always a relation with the heroines be it romance or lust or whatever. For the first time there is relation of hate. There is strong hate relation between the two characters and at the same time there is a very palpable, underlying love there... it is very hard to explain," Emraan said.

About reports that the character that Emraan plays in 'The Dirty Picture' is based on his producer uncle Mahesh Bhatt, the actor said, "It's not part of the script, but I have probably subconsciously borrowed from him. In his time he was a rebellious director who did things his own way. There was traditional Bollywood cinema and there were his type of films. He was also very headstrong and volatile, like my character Abraham."