BOMEN IRANI: Mr. Bombastic

Actor Boman Irani enjoys every ball in his court and pulls every gig to the hilt.
He may have been a potato chips seller and a professional photographer, but Boman Irani, today, is only and only an actor, inside out, upside down, in every pore of his massive being-an actor. That’s why he grins when he sees himself act out in the Tata Sky advertisement; that’s why he makes faces, winks an eye, and chuckles, “click-clack-click-clack” to photographers who shoot him; that’s why he mockingly pleads with the company manager to give him a free dish antenna.

The actor oscillates, becoming the character and Boman again. And he watches himself all the time, his every swagger in the brown cowboy boots, each sway of his jacket and jeans, his radiant face, his husky voice.
Boman is his own 70 mm. “I enjoy the process of acting. But I have to prepare (for the varied roles he plays). I come from south Bombay. I am a Parsi. I have to put on layer after layer (to create an authentic character.)” Boman’s point of reference was the comical-villainous medical college dean in Munnabhai MBBS and the unscrupulous property dealer in Khosla Ka Ghosla. Maybe he is Peter Sellers himself (the late comic actor from Britain.)

About being fearless in his choice of roles, like accepting Farhan Akhtar’s Positive, a film on AIDS that others had refused. Boman explains it in the filmi way. “I’d feel scared if I have to plunge into river from a cliff. But I will jump when I know there are policemen chasing me. Who are these policemen? My creative boredom.”

Should actors have egos? “Yes. Actors should have good egos. It’s what you think about yourself. It’s like challenging yourself.” But Boman is strangely too humble for comfort. He says his son just graduated and did odd jobs and that he dropped him in New Jersey for an MBA course (as if it’s still all middle-class). He knows it’s not. It’s just the pretension, the deception unforeseen success brings. It even makes others feel good about you, not jealous.

Which future role excites him, when asked, “You see it’s not about excitement.
You return home after work and you feel satisfied. You say: ‘Aaj kuch achha kiya!’” He says the film is Goal. He plays a football coach. The film taught him strategy, he says.

But the questions loops back to Chak De India. “People don’t make films to mobilise people. When we made Munnabhai, we didn’t think it would start Gandhigiri. Someone might have said: ‘Woh takla kaun hai? (Who’s that bald man?)’, seeing me in the film’s poster. Not any more.

“Is he turning into a director?”I don’t know.
One fine morning I might wake up and feel the audience is bored with my acting and I might turn a director. I don’t know.”