The state-level basketball player, Ali Fazal, who now happens to be one of the finest actors in the country, wowed us with his acting aptitudes in several films, web series so far! Especially Mirzapur, we can’t ignore how grand he portrayed his role in the series. Even with a shorter role in films, he nailed it to the core and made sure he steals away all the limelight within that! So, today we are up with the showbiz journey that he himself talked about in an interview with BangaloreMirror.
In the interview with BangaloreMirror, Ali Fazal talks about his career and journey as an actor. He mentioned “It has been filled with ups and downs. I don’t come from a film background, neither was I groomed to be an actor. Sometimes I wish I had studied acting. I don’t regret it though. I studied hard, finished my Masters, and interned off and on with the UN. That’s when I got the taste of acting in films. Someone from the film’s unit saw me in a play and referred me to Rajkumar Hirani who was casting for 3 Idiots (he plays Joy Lobo who commits suicide). I won’t complain about my journey at all, but working in show business is challenging.” He added when he was asked about his preference, “it’s only in India that films are considered to be the biggest deal. Today, I would leave everything if I got an offer from a Broadway show in New York, because that is THE thing over there. I recently worked with Judi Dench in the Hollywood film Victoria and Abdul (based on Shrabani Basu’s book of the same name). And she’s a star when it comes to Shakespeare’s plays. Her stage performances are talked about more than her Oscars. The stage is important. In our country, however, films are bigger. And even though theatre is gaining back some of its lost glory, there’s still no money in it.”
As we all know he doesn’t belong to the Bollywood family or have a film background, he mentioned, “I think it’s more of a mindset. A lot of people come to Bollywood thinking they will become the next Shah Rukh Khan or Salman Khan. The moment you think like that, you have lost the battle. I don’t like to be intimidated by anything; I might be from Lucknow, which is smaller than the metropolises, but I won’t be intimidated. I think that’s why my struggle never seemed like one; I considered them to be small steps. My family asked me why I was acting, and that there can be only one Shah Rukh Khan. But made me realise that I won’t get any help and that I have to find my own way.
SRK in fact produced the film Always Kabhi Kabhi in which I played my first lead role. It bombed, and I taste dust right away. It couldn’t have gotten any worse, could it? I thank him even now, and we have a great relationship. He was my mentor at that time, and it’s always nice to meet him. Then Fukrey and Khamoshiyan happened. So, it hardly matters if you have a film background or not. At the end of the day, it’s all about hard work.”
