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Film actor Abbas

It’s been a long time since he’d done a Telugu film. What made him chose Anasuya? “I have directors coming to me with cliched stories but this time I liked Ravi Babu’s narration. There was some cockiness, subtle romance everything about it. For Idi Sangati, director Chandra Siddartha wanted me to match up with Tabu they wanted me as a married thirty-plus guy with mature look, to put on weight and have a beard. I liked his script, it had an unusual, grey shade. I enjoyed, had a blast in the last two movies. Then there is Satyam Sivam Sundaram releasing this month (Tamil) I played for the first time an anti-hero. It’s one of my best performances till date. I’m doing a solo film Rudramani too. Ask Abbas about the inconsistent career graph and he explains, “I’m basically a content person but moody, I might do eight films sometimes, one film and sometimes nothing at all.

The biggest battle is within me, I don’t have to compete with bank balances, number of hits, cars etc. I always take off when I feel like. I don’t need to compete with other people. I’ll do films on my terms and conditions, whatever role it might be. Also my PR skills are poor, once my shooting is done I stay at home and watch TV, there is no socialising, don’t take producers and directors for dinner. I guess you got to be there and when the opportunity comes we got to grab it, that’s exactly what I’m doing”. The actor lives with his family in Chennai and speaks Tamil fluently, though his Telugu is little jerky. “My folks live in Bangalore and I have a special attachment to Hyderabad, I’ve seen this city grow. My mum visited Moulali and asked for a mannat, and then she conceived me. Everytime I come here I make it a point to go to this dargah and yes, gorge on Paradise biryani. ”

He has worked with talented stars like Tabu, Aishwarya and Mammooty and has a good rapport with all of them. “I’m very fond of Tabu. She’s a good friend and we’ve worked together in three films. With Aishwarya there wasn’t much interaction in Kandukondein Kandukondein, but I found her to be a very warm and caring person. People say she is artificial but that’s not true at all. Mammooty is known to be a serious person but I took the liberty to even pull his legs. He treats me like his younger brother. A noteworthy thing about all the heroines who have worked with me is that all of them have reached the top,” he says with an inimitable smile and adds quickly that he still has a long way to go.

Y. SUNITA CHOWDHARY

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