To catch a falling star

If an enviably sculpted physique worth the lens of American photographer Bruce Weber, complemented by a visually arresting face were all it took to cut it in Bollywood, and reign on, Zayed Khan would be an irrepressible superstar today. But that's not how things roll in show business; it takes all that and more, the more being the mellifluous sound of the box office ka-ching, without which you are, in plain speak, a failure. The actor turned into an expeditious star with his very first film. In his second film, Main Hoon Na, Shah Rukh Khan lent his super stardom to the younger Khan, who endeared himself to the audiences with his able Lucky Laxman performance, escalating his rise on the marquee even further. He'd arrived, he thought gullibly, forever.

How does someone who started out as a dreamboat star, who had it all – good looks, big hits and a fair bit of talent go from being the next big thing to near celluloid oblivion?

"I never knew I'd be a dreamboat star or any such. At the time, I never even knew your first movie can make you a big star and your second film can escalate you to such dizzying heights! It was like a heady mix of immediate and accelerated stardom and it feels good to be adored right? I was absolutely clueless as to why this was happening to me – the adulation, the fussing about and the unprecedented desire to work with a raw, mediocre actor like me," says Zayed, whose new film Sharafat Gayi Tel Lene, released earlier this month.

"I started living in this veritable wonderland where everything is unimaginably easy, thinking it's mine to be had rightfully, making me feel absolutely invincible. I started signing films for no reason, believing the self-appointed free advisory board fanning my ego, thereby making colossal mistakes that were detrimental to my nascent career graph. The lines between my real and reel life got blurrier, ceasing to exist eventually, and I was enslaved by my own myth," says Zayed, of his downward spiral with candour so rare, unlike that of a proverbial Bollywood star.
He'd heard stories of Bollywood's unforgiving and ruthless stance towards failure, but never in a million years did he think it'd happen to him. His films started failing at the box office and getting stuck in production, his calls went unanswered, people didn't turn up for his birthday parties and those who stood up to wish him earlier now remained seated, exchanging perfunctory greetings.

"It's been tough and it hurt to see the shift in people's attitude towards me, but I'm not sympathetic toward myself. It's been more of corrective introspection than anything else. Did I screw it all up? Yeah, I did and I want to make it better. Do I regret it? Hell yeah! Being a star is easy, but staying an actor is the tough gig. I thought this glimmer would last forever, and that's when I started slacking – skipping workouts, dance rehearsals, character briefs and dialogue sessions and naturally, it affected the raison d'être I was in show business – my acting skills. I wasn't consistent in my craft and it showed. It's failure that really coerces you to look within, outside the seductive trappings of stardom and it is then that the phoenix must burn to emerge, and boy, have I burned! The trick is to get out and change, which I have. I've been burnt in the fire, but the fire within me to turn it all around rages on unabated. I'm not bitter about my failure or others' success."

He realised the only way to redeem himself and get his "sense of self" back was to get out there and do what he loves – act. "I've resolved to beat the system by doing the time and putting in the hard work and going the distance, with Sharafat Gayi Tel Lene, my new film that hit theatres on 16 January 2015. Being stripped off my stardom has been very liberating and it feels good to feel normal. The bigger you get in the game, you're more further away from the characters you want to portray; you know nothing about the underdog if you're breathing rarified air at the top. I'm feeling the pain and that's the only truth that's there in my life right now. Pain is the ultimate truth and it has pushed me to tap my inner reservoir of strength as an actor."

Observing the world at close quarters in the harsh light of the day and not the blinding halogen lights on film sets that he was accustomed to, helped him. He says he respects and loves Sanjay Dutt, Salman Khan and Shah Rukh Khan. "Their incredible career graphs have inspired me tremendously. They have tasted success and failure both in equal measure, and have arrived here only after great sweat and toil and I intend to do the same. For me, they are not only heroes on screen, but off screen as well, such are their personas, the last of the Mohicans so to speak."

Despite the hard knocks and falls in his life, Zayed stands tall, taking it all in his stride. "We have no control over our fame, just ourselves." Spoken like a real hero, and not one that leaps out of a Marvel comic in caped disguise.

dnasunday@dnaindia.net; @dna