Interview: Siddharth Narayan
By: Simran Mody, India Correspondent
It’s been a long time. Perhaps he should not have left us without anything more than a solid supporting role in Rang de Basanti.
Four years later, just as the one thing Bollywood had to remember R. Siddharth Narayan by was beginning to fade, the popular Tamil and Telugu film industries actor found a way to make his name fresh and relevant again.
After making his Bollywood splash as a supporting character in the 2006 blockbuster hit Rang de Basanti, Siddharth bided his time waiting for the perfect role to make it available. That role came four years later, with the South Indian actor making good use of his hands in this week’s release of Striker.
Playing a lead protagonist role in a Hindi film for the first time, Siddharth prides himself on being extremely choosy in what projects he lends himself to. While such discrimination is usually a luxury possessed by actors or filmmakers who have decades of blockbuster projects under their belt, Siddharth has managed to do quite well for himself, despite making his big screen debut in 2003.
While most Indian actors commit to as many as five or six projects in a given year, the Tamil actor feels he can get away with such large gaps between films mostly because he invests a large chunk of time researching his character to make it as real as possible.
In Striker, for example, Siddharth not only learned how to become a skilled carom player, but he also took up residence in the locale where the film was based so he could best portray a local resident onscreen.
“I’ve done only nine films in nine years, so that itself shows how choosy I am,” Siddharth humbly explained to reporters earlier this week. “I’ve invested a lot in Striker. I had to undergo carom training for two months. Also, since the character stays in Malwani in Mumbai, I went to live there for a few weeks.”
Playing a carom player who tries to avoid falling into a life of crime on the fringes of the underbelly of 1980s Bombay, Siddharth said Striker is a unique sports film that audiences will easily connect to, despite it not being a film about cricket.
“I think everybody, in their childhood at least, has played carom, so that connection is there,” Siddharth explained to reporters. “Striker is a story of friendship, goodwill and understanding with a touch of crime. Also, this film is about the game (of carom) on a very basic level. Otherwise, it is the story of an underdog — a story of the triumph of the human spirit over odds.”
Of course, Siddarth was quick to tell reporters the odds of him returning to Bollywood after portraying a disillusioned young buck alongside Aamir Khan, Sharman Joshi and R. Madhavan in Rang de Basanti were a lot higher than most realize. He frankly stated that, in addition to waiting for the right role to land in his lap, a budding career in the south had to be fully fleshed out as well.
“To be very honest, I had just become a star in the south before (Rang de Basanti) happened,” he said in his interview with the press. “I could not completely abandon that. I have really worked hard to ensure my place in Southern cinema.”
Winning a Best Actor award for his role in the Telugu film, Nuvvostanante Nenoddantana, and making a name for himself in the sizable Tamil and Telugu industries, Siddharth now seeks to become a mainstay in the monstrous market of Hindi cinema.
“Now that I am an established star (in the south), I can afford to spend time and make a mark in Hindi cinema,” Siddharth emphatically stated. “But make no mistake. I am here to stay.”
Hopefully audiences will agree after watching Striker, which opens this weekend in India. The film is also the first-ever cinematic release to be simultaneously available for free viewing on YouTube.
