Amid talks of insider-outsider, actor Manoj Bajpayee says he chooses to be the latter. Even after a three-decade-long career full of acclaim, he says he chooses to be on the “fringe” of the film industry.

“Being an insider means looking for validation, I am not interested in anybody’s validation or approval; the only person who does that [for me] is me. I am the biggest critic of myself, and only I know what I want to do with myself. When you are on the fringe, there is a lot of freedom you feel. I have never complained... I am still there and will always be. Being an insider means too many things I either don’t agree with, or don’t have the time to indulge in,” the Padma Shri awardee tells us.

Asked to elaborate on what those things are, Bajpayee jokes, “I will write a book some day.” But on a serious note, he comments on the fact that his name crops up when asked to say which outsider made it big. “The biggest outsider examples are Akshay Kumar and Shah Rukh Khan. Those are the people who were outsiders and became insiders. I have been an outsider, and I love to be that in the industry. I will still keep doing my work the way I want to do it. I don’t have any problem in being an outsider, because it gives me a lot of freedom to do what I want to, as there is no expectation from you, be at the box office or awards,” he says.

His journey has been a tough one, and the 51-year-old has been more than vocal whenever asked about it. But there was bound to be a point when after facing so many obstacles, he would have wanted to quit it all. Did he have any backup plan if acting didn’t work out? He replies in the negative. “One thing was sure, I was not going to go back, and not going to change my profession. I was very sure that if I have to do a street play on some nukkad, I would still be an actor. The madness or passion was about the craft; it was never about a luxury car or an apartment. Everything that I have earned was unplanned, nor did [thoughts about it] exist in my mind. It was all a byproduct. Today, if I get the money I ask for, it’s not that I worked for it — I worked simply to be known as the actor that I am,” explains Bajpayee.