In a career spanning 21 years, Emraan Hashmi has witnessed the highest highs and a lot of lows. In the initial years of his career, he gained popularity for his onscreen image as a serial kisser and jolted lover. And then there was a phase when a bunch of his films like Azhar and Hamari Adhuri Kahani, among others, that had all the ingredients of a quintessential box office money spinner, tanked. But Emraan’s biggest professional regret remains doing a big film, the trailer of which made him squirm.
In an exclusive chat with News18 Showsha, Emraan says, “I did a film way back. I wouldn’t want to take the name because a lot of creative people were involved in it. It was a film made with the best of intentions. It had a great script. However, it turned out to be this god-awful film (sighs)! I couldn’t even see it because the trailer itself was so cringe. It definitely wasn’t what I had signed up for.”
Not the one to mince his words, he reveals that moments like these add to his emotions of insecurity, especially when he sees his contemporaries delivering hits after hits. “Envy engulfs me all the time. I’m envious of a lot of people and that’s a part and parcel of any industry. There’s always a perception of you and let’s face it, there’s always someone who you feel is better than you. And this feeling has got to do a lot with your temperament and the kind of person you’re,” says the actor, who was recently seen in Showtime.
And this, according to Emraan, invariably leads to an ego tussle in his own mind that brings out the narcissist in him. “There’s always a battle in my head that a certain actor might have gotten a role but I deserved it. I know that I could’ve done a better job at it because it’s a s**t job that he did (laughs). There’s always this feeling. There’s this narcissistic side to you where you feel that you could’ve done something better than others,” he reveals.
Emraan began his acting career with uncle Mahesh Bhatt’s Footpath and prior to that, he worked as an assistant director in the latter’s productions such as Raaz and Kasoor. Despite belonging to a film family, he shares that industry politics ‘shocked’ him when he became an actor. “I was too young to understand that. I came in when I was 19 years old. I was innocent and immature because I had just come out of college,” he says.
The Tiger 3 and The Dirty Picture actor further continues, “I realised that it’s got to do a lot with PR and people who’re political in their stance. Success is made up of a lot of complicated little things. It’s not as simple as ‘you’re a good actor and so you’ll get success’. There are a lot of dimensions to it that need to play out.”
