The National Award-winning Nawazuddin Siddiqui has earned his spurs as a critically acclaimed actor. Both the critics and the audience have heaped praises on him for his stints in films such as Gangs of Wasseypur (2012) and The Lunchbox (2013). With his latest release, the Salman Khan-starrer Kick, Siddiqui has tried his hand at a full-fledged commercial masala entertainer. And he got a real kick out of his experience, according to IANS.
“Kick is the biggest film I’ve worked in so far. This film will give me a much broader audience base because of Salman Khan’s presence,” he said about the film, which released on Friday. Of the role he depicts in the film, he shared, “This is completely different from what I have done before. I have mostly played the lower middle-class person, but not in [Kick]. My character is grey and quite thrilling. People will enjoy it,” reported firstpost.com.
Sharing screen space with Khan for the first time, Siddiqui found the superstar’s honesty to be his biggest virtue. “What I like about Salman is his honesty. He is exactly the same, inside and outside. It’s this quality of transparency that connects him with the audience,” he said. “We come from different schools of acting. I like to prepare for my scenes. But once on the sets, both Salman and I like to improvise with our sequences.”
Siddiqui is all praise for Sajid Nadiadwala, who has made his directorial debut with the project. “Kick may officially be his first film as director, but Sajid sahab has grown up on the sets watching directors shoot films for his grandfather and father,” said Siddiqui. “While shooting Kick with Sajid sahab, I didn’t feel like I was being directed by a first-time director,” he added.
Known for his eccentric style of acting, Siddiqui was initially required to make some alterations to his performance. “Sajid sahab told me to raise the octave of my acting pitch by one notch. However, when we got down to doing the scenes, we discovered that my normal style of performance suited the film’s mood just fine,” he explained.
Now, the actor is all set to weave magic in his upcoming film, Sriram Raghavan’s Badlapur. “I have a positive role in Badlapur. Sriram’s detailing of scenes and approach to characters and direction are so different from Sajid’s. Both have offered me great learning experiences,” he said.
Nawaz will be co-starring with actor Varun Dhawan in Badlapur and feels that the young actor is dedicated to getting the role right. “He has only done ‘bright’ films, so far. This is his ‘dark’ film and he has blended into the mood effectively,” he commented.
Published in The Express Tribune, July 26th, 2014.
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