Mumbai: Megastar Amitabh Bachchan has said that he was “cautioned” by wife Jaya about “volatile temper” of producer Vidhu Vinod Chopra when he was signed up for 2007 film Eklavya.
“When I told Jaya I was working with Vidhu Vinod Chopra, she nodded silently, which is an indicator of things to come. When the time came for me to go for outdoor shoot, I told Jaya I am going, she asked how long I will be away, I said, a month.”
“She said, I will see you back in three days. She told me he (Chopra) abuses, shouts and screams… this is not going to suit your temperament, and that I will be back in three days,” the 69-year-old actor said in a lighter vein on the concluding day of the Vidhu Vinod Chopra festival here last evening.
The festival was held to mark 30 years of Chopra in the industry.
Eklavya: The Royal Guard, directed by Chopra, featured Saif Ali Khan, Sharmila Tagore, Sanjay Dutt, Vidya Balan, Raima Sen, Jackie Shroff, Jimmy Shergill and Boman Irani besides Bachchan.
“So that was the impression I had when I went to work with Vinod.”
“But a day before I went for shooting, I happened to meet Priety Zinta, and she said apart from story, film and other things you will enjoy working with Vinod as he looks after his artists extremely well. I feel when an artist is comfortable in a set-up then things just work eventually and he did take good care of me,” the actor said.
Bachchan also feels that the creative differences between an actor and a filmmaker must be sorted out at the ground level itself instead of on sets.
“Sometimes there are creative differences. For me personally, I would rather have those creative differences at the time of hearing the story rather than on sets. I believe once you are on sets, you are committed as a professional… I will follow what the director will tell me to do, there will be no arguments, but yes there will be suggestions,” he said.
“In an emotional scene in the movie, Vinod wanted my character to have his eyes moist and I thought tear should drop. However, I realised later that tear dropping would have added to the emotion. I felt Vinod was right, it was just sufficiently enough to wet the eyes but not allow it to drop,” he said.
The veteran actor, however, clarified that he did not like creative differences on sets as they “appear” to the actor while he is going through the script. Bachchan also expressed his desire to work with Chopra again.
“It took 30 years for him to give me a voice-over in his film Parineeta. He is persistent and every year he used to come but finally Eklavya happened. Hope he does not take another 30 years to cast me,” he said. (PTI)