JOIN USThe most surprising thing for Jim Sarbh is that after playing remorseless Khalil in Neerja he is flooded with requests from girls who want him to ‘hijack’ their plane. This surely is a compliment for an actor who got into the skin of the character and played unpredictable terrorist in the film that has minted Rs 50 crore in 10 days.
But girls are the last thing on the mind of this 28-year-old whose happiness lies in the fact that he is finally being paid for what he likes to do the most — acting. “You know how theatre is... you don’t get paid much. All I ever wanted was to act and finally I will be paid for it,” he tells Metrolife.
“The world around me has changed suddenly. There was a good feeling when I was on the sets, but then a year passed and nothing happened. But I am glad that the film has been received well,” he adds.
The unconventional features of the Parsi boy from Mumbai make him stand out from the crowd. Even though he admits that he doesn’t have pan-India face, he isn’t bothered because contours of Bollywood are changing. “I am not worried about getting roles.”
His love for theatre began during high school. Even though he is a trained psychologist from Emory University in Atlanta, he ensured his acting pursuits continued while he understood complexities of human mind and behaviour. It was this ‘thinking’ he employed to get into the mind of Khalil.
“Thinking about it now, I feel what I did during shots was spontaneous. This particular film was different because I was controlling people and didn’t know how they would react to my reaction,” says Sarbh who has featured in plays like Death of a Salesman with Alyque Padamsee and The Living Room with Kalki Koechlin.
“All I was thinking at that time was how to keep passengers like cattle. I had to control and dominate them. I had to understand what Khalil was thinking... he was so impatient and looked down upon people. In a way he was a sociopath,” he recollects.
“The ideal version for Khalil was that he would get on board and scare passengers and everything will be fine. But then he meets resistance and because of this he gets tired of everyone and starts killing those who wouldn’t listen to him,” he adds.
Sarbh, who has also directed three plays, Untold Stories, Cock, and Bull, feels that in theatre he doesn’t have to be unpredictable with actors because they have rehearsed their roles and the act several times. But films give an actor the room to respond to situations, characters and incidents spontaneously. He is currently shooting for Konkana Sen Sharma’s Death of a Ganj.