Manoj Bajpayee says that an actor has to be like a fly on the wall – he’s present in the room, but still not quite there. If an actor achieves that in life, then things become easy. He says, “You can see things which are unseen.” During a recent conversation at IFFI, Manoj spoke about why he thinks silence speaks the most, why mastering pauses is difficult, and his immense dislike for selfies.

Manoj says that when he got admission to DU, he was blown away by the amount of work he had to do to perfect the art of dialogue delivery. He recalls, “A teacher of dramatics heard me saying dialogues, and she shouted at me. She said, ‘Everything that you are saying is wrong. Your pronunciation is wrong, pitch is wrong, rhythm is wrong.’ Here I was, thinking that coming from a poetry background, everything was going to be fine. From there, I started working on myself.”

He also adds that as an actor with decades of experience, he now sees things differently – “Pause is the most difficult dialogue for any actor.”

Talking about silence, he adds, “When there is no dialogue, there are too many dialogues. It’s just that you are not voicing them, but they are happening inside your brain. That is where the actor’s job becomes more important because you have to think about what the character wants to say but is not saying.”

Talking about staying away from stardom, Manoj says, “I love strolling in the market and buying vegetables; it gives me more of a high than people taking my selfies. Somehow, I feel that selfies invade my private space. It’s too close to me – nowadays, even my wife isn’t that close to me (laughs).”

He says that he doesn’t want to be seen, but wants to observe people. He explains, “On a serious note, I feel that if I’m going to keep my car windows black, how will I observe people, understand them, and get those characters, get their minds into my characters? The more I am cut off from people, the more my journey will go downward. My kind of actor can’t afford to be away from people.”

He adds, “I was never chasing stardom. Stardom has to do with mystery and glamour – what I was chasing were roles.”