The first time I faced a camera was in Patna when I played a prince in a Doordarshan documentary on festivals of the Mithila region. I was pretty clueless about where to look and what to do and just about managed to pull it off.

The next time, it was for the Kannada film, Chigurida Kanasu, which was shot in the Banaras Hindu University campus. I was a National School of Drama student at the time and a bunch of us were chosen to play the protagonist Shankar’s friends. Like most friends of the hero, we were happier than him in happy times and sadder than him when he was in distress. It was a very critical role, you see!

I then shot for Hrithik Roshan’s Lakshya when I was in Delhi. Unfortunately, my part was chopped off on the editing table and I didn’t make the final cut. When I came to Mumbai, looking for work, Prakash Jha’s associate asked me to audition for a role in Nashik. Upon reaching there, I realised I had already got the part, although a small one in Apaharan. But you will really have to search for me.

Since I didn’t come to Mumbai to be ‘launched’ and was only looking to making my passion into a profession, I wasn’t nervous. I just wanted to earn enough money while trying to do interesting roles. Someone who wanted to be a hero would never play one of five henchmen in films. By the time I landed Gangs Of Wasseypur, I had been working in films for eight years and had played a gun-toting villain so many times that I didn’t realise I would become a known face after it. But it was only thanks to Anurag Kashyap and the arc that he gave Sultan Qureshi that I got noticed.

I wasn’t ever lured by the glamour of showbiz. The first time I watched a film was when my father, a priest, was called to perform a pooja at a theatre, Vasant Talkies. It was Jai Santoshi Maa. I watched spellbound but never imagined that I would appear on the same screen one day, that someone would want to click a selfie with me or that a fan would visit my parents with a gift of clothes all the way from Delhi. My parents still don’t own a TV set and have no idea that people know me now.