I do not want to be a superstar : Ronit Roy

Ronit Roy who is currently playing K D Pathak on Sony’s Adaalat is back with the fourth season of Kitchen Champion after having bagged several awards for the path breaking film Udaan. At present the actor is riding an unusual high in his career and enjoying every moment of it. But the much grounded Roy believes there is still a lot that he has to learn as an actor and says he will be a student all his life. Excerpts from an interview. This is the fourth season of Kitchen Champion. What are your expectations for this season? I never have any expectations and that is my basic funda of life. Here my job is to deliver more than what they expect from me. So if I expect something I will only do that much but when I do not expect I will keep on doing more and more and raise the bar. But I have a feeling that it’s going well with the feedback that has come from the audience. In fact Kitchen Champion has also come back with season 4 only because of the demands of the audience. Having done so many seasons has it helped you become a good cook? I do know how to cook. But with the show I am directly involved with the tips given to the contestants and it helps me learn a lot. However at home I make Italian food for my children. How was it getting an award for a film? It feels great because my last film that I shoot was in 1996 and it was after 12 years in television that I went to do a film. It feels good to be rewarded for it and also to know that the audience has now grown up to be receptive to a cinema that’s not commercial. It gives a lot of hope to actors to do more films of this kind. Especially in my situation it gives hope to a lot of television actors. Earlier there was a myth that if you’re a television actor you cannot be a film actor for if you want to be one you have to stop doing television. It’s obviously difficult for a person who has a family and his daily income is television. Such a person can’t quit TV and do films. I’d say for those kinds of actors there is hope now and if they have talent they will get a way to showcase it. After the success of your film don’t you think you should have focused more on films than on television? Till today I do not have a portfolio shot, I do not have a manager nor do I have a PRO. So I do not believe in being in the rat race. I am happy in the zone I am. I am a good man and I do not want to be a superstar. I am on the road to being a good actor and everyday through my work I discover new facets about acting and I am fine with it. But did you sign anything after Udaan? Yes, I have received 15 to 16 scripts but I have just signed three because the rest were those regular Bollywood commercial movies. I have nothing against regular Bollywood commercial films for I am doing a regular Bollywood commercial film but these scripts had nothing. Can you tell us something about these films? I can’t talk about the films but I have done Deepa Mehta’s Midnight Children and now three more will soon begin. Any plans of doing daily soaps? Not really because my show on Sony Adaalat is going bi-weekly. Then from July to March I have to shoot four feature films which will leave no time for shows. There are talks of Bandini coming back. Do you think sequels work on TV? I feel if Bandini is brought back and formatted well it will do well as seasons have worked abroad. How different is it working for the big screen and the small screen? They are different mediums of work, but as an actor there is no difference. My performance does not change because it’s a video camera or it is a film camera. Popularity of TV is instant and huge and there is no denying that fact that is why every movie is promoted on television. But for a daily soap the daily 25 minutes of programming and five episodes of a week adds up to 125 minutes which is a feature film’s time limit. But a feature film of the same duration will be shot over 50 to 60 days whereas a serial will be shot over 4 to5 days- so that’s the difference. And of course to shoot a 90 minutes feature film you have a budget of 5 to 6 crore. Here you do not even have budget of a crore that’s why the difference is so huge. How has life changed for you now? Everything is different that time I was a boy. I did not know too much about the world or about the things around. I still do not know things but life has taught me a lot. I flopped as an actor that is why it does not matter. Failure or success neither of them move me. But I learn from both. If I fail, I analyse the situation and the same is for success. You need to know the things that lead you there. I feel life is a learning process and you keep learning. There is no end to learning as there is so much to learn. Your favourite host on TV? Sajid Khan, Manish Paul, Javed Jaffery. I can’t think of others at present. Any plan of venturing into production? Never. I would want to be an actor throughout my life and if things change I would take up direction. Actually I would want to be an actor till my last breath but if I get a story and if I feel a director won’t be able to do justice to it I would like to tell it as a director. However production is not my ball game and it does not even interest me.