Javed Akhtar is of the opinion that his son Farhan has been let down by some of the scripts that he has accepted as an actor.
“If you look at Farhan’s performance on Rock On and Bhaag Milkha Bhaag you will see an effortlessness that is hard to find in our cinema. We as a movie making industry prefer our actors to indulge in overstatement. Farhan is a subtle actor.He believes in understatement. In some cases, his performances have been let down by the scripts that were meant to support him.An actor can only excel if the script supports him,” says Javed.
As a filmmaker Farhan is in his father’s opinion a gamechanger. “Dil Chahta Hai burst on the screen with a completely new language and an untried concept of friendship. I can’t wait to see Farhan direct again.We are a collaborating on a project. Hopefully it would live up to the audiences’ and my expectation of Farhan.”
Javed Saab also praises his daughter Zoya’s proclivity to humanize his characters. “If you look at Anil Kapoor in Zoya’s Dil Dhadakne Do he is not a very good husband and father. Yet, Zoya never allows us to hate the character. She instils a core of compassion even to the character of Ranveer’s father in Gully Boy. The man is a wife beater and he roughs up his son. But his anger and violence make sense in the world he inhabits.”
When asked to compare his two children Javed Saab opines, “In many ways they are the same. However Farhan is far less forthcoming than Zoya. No one knows what’s going on in Farhan’s mind.