Scripts, not language of the film is impt for Atul Kulkarni

Actor Atul Kulkarni who shot into fame with his national award-winning performance in Kamal Hassan's Hey Ram says scripts are more important to him than the language of the film.

"I have never accepted any random film offers just for the sake of being a regular face in the film industry. Same is with Hindi," Kulkarni said, when asked how he manages to balance his Hindi as well as Marathi film career. According to the actor, meaningful cinema which lets him explore his talent to the fullest and different roles are more important than just doing more and more films. "Quality over quantity, to be precise," he said.

Kulkarni does not believe that this period is a golden era in Marathi cinema. "Even though Marathi films are being made on a very big scale these days, I still don’t believe that it’s the golden age of Marathi cinema. In recent times, only comedy films have earned good business for the Marathi film industry," he said. Only if meaningful films are made more often and the revenue earned is invested in the industry alone, the success can be sustained and greater prosperity can come, he felt.

Speaking about his Marathi film Natrang which releases this week, he said he was very anxious about how he would essay the role of Guna Kagalkar as a wrestler as well as a 'nachya' (a man who acts like a woman in the tamasha, one of the oldest folk art).

"Such films motivate me, and I love such challenges. Guna was definitely a big challenge for me," he said. Speaking about his character, Kulkarni said Guna Kagalkar is an amateur wrestler whose most zealous dream is to be the king in a tamasha. But later, for the sake of the art, he has to sacrifice his dream.

"While essaying the role of Guna, it was necessary that I involve myself completely in the movie – both physically as well as mentally. I had to work hard for building my body to be Guna the wrestler. For his passion towards art, Guna has to become a 'nachya' later in the film, and that required me to lose weight in a month-and-a-half. It was big physical risk also," he said.

"Every artiste goes through the difficult phase where he has to choose between family duties and passion for his dream and Guna epitomises all of their travails, all of their dreams," the actor said. Kulkarni credited debutante director Ravi Jadhav for handling the subject which brings back the Tamasha genre in Marathi movies after a gap of several years.

"Ravi's study on films and observations about life is much deeper and longer. He has presented the story in a beautiful, meaningful yet crisper way. He studied Dr Anand Yadav's novel by the same name very well before taking up this film," the actor said.

An National School of Drama graduate, Kulkarni said Kamal Hassan's Hey Ram gave him a chance to study films minutely. "It was a great experience to learn the aesthetic as well as technical details of film making while I was doing Hey Ram ", he said.