During an exclusive chat with Filmfare, Manoj Bajpayee discussed the meaning of success as per his definition. He said, “I’ve always wondered what the meaning of success truly is. As per me, the first true emotion of success is when you receive a paycheck for the work you put your heart into. The second one is when you get the freedom to choose a project of your liking. And I feel that I’ve been lucky to be handed good scripts.”
Speaking about the industry, during a different interview, he opened up a bit more, this time talking about how the industry has been harsh for certain talents. He mentioned how many actors have silently disappeared from the industry due to the treatment they endured.
He said, “Stereotyping is for everyone. For many actors, we ruined talent just by doing that in this industry. This industry always had a bad reputation and bad karma of demolishing such great talent by reducing them to nothing on the set, in terms of the roles, and in terms of the treatment that they have given to them. Many of the people went away, withered away, without any recognition.”
He added, “I have always maintained that only 25 per cent of my acting abilities have been used. There is a lot. But I think that’s an actor’s greed or an actor’s hunger. I am very happy that the fire is still burning in the belly, and I’m always looking forward to the next one.”
Divya Dutta added her thoughts about the tags of supporting actors taking away from a performer’s efforts, sidelining them, and having them get placed in a generic sense. To this, Manoj added his thoughts. “I think that angst is very much understandable because we are still so colonised and believe in a lot in hierarchy. He is the main actor, she is the main actor, this one is a character actor, this one is a supporting actor. Based on these we fix the hierarchy. I have been through this phase, and I’ve fought so many battles on personal levels, but I am happy, as Divya rightly said that it is not there anymore.”
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