Shahid’s looks in Haider, Padmaavat, Mausam and Kaminey; ( left) as drug-addled rockstar Tommy Singh in Udta Punjab


As told to Natasha Coutinho (MUMBAI MIRROR; March 19, 2018)

I’m grateful that filmmakers today are offering actors roles that help them rediscover and redefine themselves. There was a time when such work happened only in theatre or in art movies. But the audience now is more sensitive and in certain instances more evolved than the filmmaker. After 15 years in the industry, what gets me going is making movies that represent different ideologies, cultures and social and economic strata. From Udta Punjab that hits you with its brutal honesty to the cinematic spectacle of Padmaavat, I’ve been fortunate to have a journey with so many mixed variables.

I started surprising people with Kaminey. It came a year after Jab We Met and required a lot of prep. I will always be grateful to Vishal Bhardwaj for being the first director to tell me, “Shahid, I don’t want you to be you in the film. I’m not casting you because you look or behave like the character.” That made the film an exciting challenge along with the fact that I was playing a double role for the first time. Charlie lisped and Guddu stammered. Vishal sir who has worked with actors like my father (Pankaj Kapur), Tabu and Irrfan Khan, gave me an opportunity I don’t think I deserved then, by giving the characters the speech disorders. In many films, stammering and lisping is portrayed as comic relief but Vishal sir told me he wanted viewers to feel for the characters, not laugh at them.

To understand the psychological impact of these disorders, we met a lot of people who stammered. Lisping is more technical but stammering grows out of suppressed emotions, lack of confidence or an emotionally dramatic incident. I worked on this for a month and a year on my body to look mean and rough, a guy from the streets. I also grew a stubble. Before Kaminey, I had always been clean-shaven and it was liberating in a way to not have to shave every day.

Vishal sir also gave me Haider aka Hamlet. Any actor who has read Shakespeare’s play will agree that it’s one of the most complex characters ever written and not everybody gets the opportunity or has the guts to accept the challenge. I did and till the film was complete, I’d worry I was a really bad actor for being unable to scale the bottomless pit that was Haider’s mind. For 70 per cent of the film, you didn’t know what’s going on in his head and in the last 30 per cent, everything just exploded. I knew if I didn’t feel everything he was feeling, even in scenes where he didn’t express much, the end wouldn’t be convincing, so I had to build the journey in my head without it showing up on camera. We were shooting in minus 18 degrees in Kashmir and I was living in this little room from where I could only see snow and my head was full of this multi-layered complex character. Haider’s prep was mind-numbing.

It also required me to shave my head for the first time in my life. Vishal sir told me, “Shahid, I’m giving you Hamlet, all I want in return is your hair.” I went bald for just the last four hours of the shoot. It was an extreme step but I knew it would add a lot of substance to the character. We could have used prosthetics or computer graphics but I wanted to give my all to the character.

For Udta Punjab, I had to play an alcoholic for the first time. I had never got drunk or smoked before, so I didn’t know what it was like to be high and Tommy was constantly high. I knew if I didn’t get it right, everybody in the fraternity would tell me not to try and show something I didn’t know on camera, so I had to get it right even without the alcohol.

Tommy was brazen, cocky and made bad music. And that wasn’t all! As the film’s director Abhishek Chaubey pointed out, this character was also abusive, egoistic and full of himself, yet he wanted people to start loving him in five minutes. And it wasn’t easy.

I had to transform myself physically for the role as cocaine addicts don’t eat much. They are usually deflated as it pushes up their metabolism. At the same time, since Tommy was a star, I needed a good body but one that looked like there’s no food in it because he’s chasing cocaine all the time. I trained three hours a day and wouldn’t eat much. I also got 14 tattoos for the role, all made to order, decided by my stylist Hakim Aalim and me. My favourite was the wings on my back that read, “Born to Fly.” I also got a tattoo on my head that read, “Fuddu.” It took me three weeks after the shoot to grow my hair back. I was getting married around the time and there were some funny reactions.

My father’s directorial, Mausam, was another difficult role as it ranged from 18 to 40 years as the journey of a small-town Punjabi boy to a squadron leader. It was the first time I had four looks in one film. My father’s prep for each look was detailed.

Padmaavat’s Rawal Ratan Singh was another significant transformation with his mane, beard and warrior-like body. It took me three months just to grow that beard. The biggest challenge was to bring the character out for the audience to experience because Raja Ratan Singh didn’t say much in a film where a lot was being said. I was representing the Mewar dynasty of Chittor and everything had to be conveyed through eyes and his presence. Full credit to producer-director Sanjay Leela Bhansali for this performance.