'Don’t live in the past, work with younger minds': Emraan Hashmi on how actors should stay relevant

Mumbai: Actor Emraan Hashmi believes the key to staying relevant in the world of cinema is to be open-minded and learn from the younger generation, understanding how they think and work.

In the 2000s and 2010s, Hashmi established himself as of the most talented actors in the industry with his performances in movies such as Gangster, The Dirty Picture, Shanghai and Tigers and attained commercial success with his franchise like Raaz, Murder, and Jannat.

Hashmi said it is important to reinvent oneself and that can happen by collaborating with contemporary filmmakers.

“Relevance is something I think it's important when you cross a certain age, when the new breed of actors and filmmakers come in. It's very important to kind of learn from them, I think that's what relevance is all about.

"When you tune into their minds and you do fresh and reinvent yourself, and do your fresh take on characters and genres and films, and not live in the past. That's where the whole game of relevance comes in,” the actor told PTI in an interview.

As a performer, Hashmi said he enjoys shaking things up and challenging himself.

"When I did Bard of Blood in 2017-2018, that was a change. If I was just being regressive and I was like ‘I'm going to keep doing what (I do)’, that's counterproductive to relevance." The 46-year-old actor also expressed concern about the industry’s complacency and said there’s a need for filmmakers to rethink their strategies.

“There's no mystery about it as an industry that is going through a certain phase where we need to recalibrate, rethink the kind of films that we're making. Make films that are a little more rooted and bring in that whole pan-India feeling ethos for the audiences to come in.

"You can't have a certain elite texture to the film because a lot of those concept films and western sensibilities are there on OTT. So, to get the numbers in, it's important to do a complete overhaul of the kind of films that we're making. But it is a sign of worry, and I think we will at some point recalibrate. We're still in the process,” Hashmi said.

The industry is "still way off" the mark when it comes to catering to audience's expectations, he added. He believes a part of the industry is in denial that their content is not working.

"I know that as an actor, people keep asking me, 'why aren't you doing so many films like you used to pre-2019?' You have to sit in story narrations and listen to the stuff that's out there. I'm not being disrespectful to anyone.

"It's just that people haven't recalibrated to what was the single screen era out of a lack of a better term for it, then when the multiplexes came in, people started fuelling a certain western sensibility," Hashmi said.

The Tiger 3 actor said the current scenario of Hindi cinema has compelled him to be “picky and choosy” about the projects he wants to do.

“For one thing, it is disastrous to have a film that doesn't connect at all on any level. You have successful films that fail at the box office. But at least the intent should be a film that reaches far and wide. So, it's important to kind of get that right. So, that's what I have in mind when I'm hearing the script or when I zero down on a film.” Hashmi, whose most recent film was Salman Khan-starrer “Tiger 3” where he essayed the role of the antagonist, said he has decided to step away from playing similar roles moving forward.

“I did ‘Tiger 3’ because I loved the character. It was not a typical kind of antagonist, there was a back story. Now that I’ve done that, I’ll not pick up too many of those." The actor is awaiting the release of “Ground Zero”, which will be out in theatres on April 25.

Also starring Sai Tamhankar and Zoya Hussain in prominent roles, the action-thriller is directed by Tejas Deoskar. It is produced by Farhan Akhtar and Ritesh Sidhwani’s Excel Entertainment.