“Once I told the immigration people, why do you issue visas, if you don't want to give us entry, and the man scowled at me saying- Are you threatening me?”
Says Irrfan: “The policemen with big guns just take you to a room and ask you to sit. They don't allow you to speak to anybody, nor use cellphones. And after long waits, they come and simply say - Go, please go.”
“So now, I have told my hosts clearly that if I am stopped at the airport, I will just buy a ticket and return to India.”
Irrfan described his role in The Life of Pi as a very challenging one. “My character was such that the fate of the film finally depended on my performance”, he said.
The actor revealed how he told his Hollywood producers that Indians do not do intimate scenes on celluloid without clothes.
“My producers told me that one normally takes off clothes in the West while going to bed. I told them, in India, it's not so. People go to bed wearing clothes. So I put on my kurta and did the intimate scenes”, said Irrfan.
On his unconventional looks, Irrfan said, “Most of the superstars are conventionally not goodlookers, whether Rajesh Khanna, or Amitabh Bachchan sahib or Dilip Sahib.
I am not comparing myself with them. I am only exploring the possibility that the inner personality of an actor counts, not good looks.”
Irrfan said: “It appears as if Hollywood is mesmerized with my looks, but for me, language does not matter. Language does not make one an elite. In The Life of Pi, I was asked to used a Canadian-French-Indian accent.”
He described Maqbool and Paan Singh Tomar among his favourite films.
