Why is an actor whose IMDB account is brimming with films in different stages of production, baby sitting his son Kabir in Delhi? That’s Adil Hussain for you, an actor’s actor who feels roles you play in life enrich the role that you play on the sets and vice versa. More interested in craft than the perks that come with it, Adil’s dive into cinematic depths, however, was driven by monetary concerns. “When my wife Kristen was full blown pregnant, I had just Rs.3000 in the account. I was teaching theatre at the National School of Drama then as a visiting faculty. Even as we were contemplating how we will make it, I got a call from the producer of Gangor, who wanted to cast me because Irrfan had left the film. I asked them to deposit this much amount in my account by this time and after that I didn’t have to look back. Thankfully, it turned out to be a good script,” reflects Adil.
It is the same house in Greater Kailash where director Abhishek Chaubey came to convince him to act in Ishqiya and Adil says over the years the industry has come to terms that Adil is based in Delhi. “That they have to arrange for air fare, car and residence for me in Mumbai.” He is not overtly ambitious either. “The way industry is offering me police officer roles, I am in danger of becoming the next Ifthikhar. I don’t want to. I am happy driving my Wagon R. In fact, I have told NSD that if they pay me well I would like to spend six months teaching.”
In between answering Kabir’s curious questions and preparing chicken noodle soup for him, Adil shows an equally curious set of photos from the sets of his forthcoming independent films. Bollywood may still be struggling to create space for Adil, young independent filmmakers are challenging him. From a small time clerk, who takes his father to Banaras to fulfil his last wish to die in the holy city in Mukti Bhavana to a transvestite doctor in Crash Test Aglae, there are multiple shades in between. He is playing Mini’s father in Kabuliwala and a farmer in Love Sonia, based on child trafficking. The most intriguing for me is the Marathi police officer in search of her daughter in the much-feted Sunrise (Arunoday in Marathi), which is going to release in the US later this month.
How does he make such transformation sound baffling in an industry where actors flaunt growing the moustache for a role as bringing heaven to earth? “It is not easy but simple,” interrupts Adil. “I am trained in the method school of acting where you use your emotional memory to create your own back story. It is an extremely efficient method and I had been following that but it was a burden on me. To be good, to be efficient! It used to haunt me. It used to give me nightmares while I was doing ‘Othello’.” However, in 2011 something interesting happened. He prepared a play called “Karmnishtha” and his mentor Dilip Shankar decided to take it to Pudducherry where Adil’s acting teacher Shaupon Boshu lives. “I was playing Arjun and Dilip Shankar Krishna. Till we went to Puducherry, we trained for just two hours every days and nothing was fixed. Every rehearsal was so different that I was kind of lost. The day came and I thought that he will tell me where to stand and draw the lines. He didn’t help. I was in a state of being I never thought I will be in. The play happened and it is the best performance that I have ever given in my life. I knew my lines, of course, but we didn’t work on emotions. No characterisation. The three things that we discussed were that we will treat the audience as Kauravas and if I don’t understand the answer of the question, I would repeat. He may ask me questions and I have to answer them as Krishna. And it just flew.” From that day the burden of acting to be good just left Adil. The only thing that he prepares now is how not to think about what he is supposed to do. “It is the most difficult thing that I have practised,” he confesses. “What I do is I read and re-read the script and all the brilliant ideas that come to my mind I just don’t entertain them and go as a blank slate or vessel to be played by the role.”
Adil, then, carried the practice to cinema with Sunrise. “I used to prepare the background of the character. I will do this, I will do that but now I realise that by doing so you are sowing the seeds of banality. Because, subconsciously, these references come from what you have seen around you. You should not know how you would do it. It will happen. And when you have nothing to hold on to it becomes scary. People don’t approach creativity activity this way. But if you want to get rid of the barrier of mediocrity then you have to let go all those things that you know and magic happens.”
He says he has finally started enjoying acting after his days at National School of Drama. “NSD gave me the tools and skills. And skills are dangerous because sometimes if you are not vigilant your skill remains. Skills should not be seen. It should be effortless. Like when you go to hear Pandit Bhimsen Joshi you don’t hear the skill, you just hear the song. Also, skills are seen when the person is not comfortable and there is unwillingness to do something. Like Govinda enjoys what he does but not everybody can be comfortable in that space.” One reminds him of Naseeruddin Shah in Dirty Picture, and Adil nods.
He recommends to every actor to follow the intuitive process. “You have to be silent to hear to that inner voice. It is a very humble voice, just requesting may be telling you, udhar nahin, idhar jao na. Going to gym is hard work but this is harder work.”
Coming back to Kabir and an actor’s everyday life, Adil says his years of practice has taught him that there is no difference between acting in a given space and acting in everyday life. “Acting teaches skills that you have to be calm and stable. Quietude is the fundamental demand of acting that I believe in. And those skills have to slip into your real life. During his NSD fellowship, he wrote a research paper exploring the relationship between the life in a given space and everyday life of an actor. “I feel the only difference is that when you are in a given space you are being commanded, you are being surrounded by certain situations that are being created by a writer. Here those situations are created by you or life itself. There is a Kabir situation, a Kristen situation, political situation, neighbour situation….” It is not about, he maintains, killing one for the other. “One enhances the other. Because of my acting, my life has got enriched. It has helped me transgress my moral boundaries, my judgments and the idea of myself.”
One of biggest inhibitions that an Indian actor needs to get over is expressing intimacy on screen. One remembers the unease of Om Puri in Aastha. “I am equally sincere with my female actors in intimate scenes as I am towards Kristen. It is just the consistency of it but as I say I love you to Kristen, the Kristen-ness of Kristen evokes certain different things in me which are unique.” Of course, people around you should understand your process. He gives the example of the much-talked about intimate scene between him and Radhika Apte in Parched, which is running now in France. “I discussed it with Kristen and she said, ‘do it well’. It may not be the case with many actors. It should be both ways. When we discussed the scene before the shoot, Radhika talked about her experiences with her English husband.” Kabir is back, and we can’t ignore him anymore!
Return to the actor’s medium
With Robot-2, Force-2 and Commando-2 on the cards to keep the kitchen fire burning, Adil has suddenly decided to go slow on films. “No matter how interesting and how intense are roles in films it doesn’t really push you towards breaking the boundaries intensely enough, consistently enough. If I am playing Othello I am rehearsing for six months, six hours a day. So I am acting. On a film set I am there for 12 hours but I am practically acting for five to six minutes in that 12-hour schedule. If you count your work from action to cut the day’s work is of five minutes. And rest of the time I am waiting to act. Of course, I am being paid well. That’s why I can offer you coffee and dry fruits but in the process I am getting bored.” He finds it odd that during that waiting period nobody discusses the craft. “During Ishqiya, Naseer sahib said that this was the first he discussed acting with a fellow actor on a film set. I was shocked.” The catalyst came on the sets of Dobara where somebody gave Lisa Ray and him a play called ‘Annapurna’ to read. “I felt refreshed and realised that I am missing the fun of acting. So this year, I am returning to Shakespeare with ‘The Tempest’. Director Roysten Abel is going to interpret it.”
