I believe in evolving myself: Akshay Kumar

Akshay Kumar talks about how he loves pushing boundaries as an actor, how he is a true blue dilliwala and his upcoming film Airlift.

In his career spanning over 23 years, Akshay Kumar has become a name to reckon with. He never gets into box-office tussles and has been delivering successful films for several years now. After tasting success with offbeat movies like Oh My God, Special 26, Baby, etc. the actor is game to experiment with different genres and does not want to shy away from doing character roles. “I believe in changing and evolving myself all the time. I want to enter my comfort zone with movies like Singh is Bling, Housefull 3, etc. and then move to something challenging and offbeat like Baby (revolved around the issue of terrorism, where Akshay played a counter-espionage agent), Gabbar (played a hero with villainous instincts) or my upcoming films like Airlift or Rustam. Apart from these, Brothers is a movie very close to my heart, especially because it is a movie about martial arts,” said Akshay, who has successfully managed to wear many hats.

He firmly states, “I don’t want to stereotype myself by restricting to any one particular genre. Dabbling with multiple roles is evident from my films like Special 26, where I thoroughly enjoyed playing the role of a conman to Robot 2, where I was signed to play a baddie. In my upcoming movie Airlift, I play the role of Ranjit Katyal, a businessman who negotiates with the government to evacuate 1,70,000 Indians stranded in Kuwait and rescue them safely to India.”

While experimenting with roles is what brings out the best of Akshay, it is his love for constantly evolving as an actor that makes him take up projects like Airlift. Sharing what makes Airlift different from what he has done before, he said at a press conference, “This one is not a quintessentially action-packed Akshay Kumar film. This is different and it is a movie based on the story of one of the largest evacuations of Indians during the Iraq-Kuwait war in 1990. Is film ka nazariya yeh hai ki hum dikahana chahte hai — dikhana kya, yeh hakikat mein hai — India is the greatest country in the world.”

Dismissing the reports of Airlift having any resemblance to Ben Affleck’s Oscar-winning film Argo, Akshay put forth, “It’s an insult if you compare Airlift with Argo because they saved only six people and we saved 1,70,000 people. How can Airlift be a copy of Argo when the Kuwait incident is a true story It is not a copy. It is something which you should be proud of. It is the story of the biggest-ever human evacuation in the history of mankind.”

At the press conference, Akshay also confessed that he was unaware of the whole Kuwait incident and came to know about it only after his director approached him with the script. He says, “I was shocked ki aisa bhi kuch hua tha, that’s why I chose to do this film and then we decided that I should produce the film too. If you look back in 1990, there is not more than one article that reported about this incident. India ne itna chup chap ye kaam kar diya. It is not a matter of joke. The government did it so silently. I have met those were rescued and brought back to the country and they cry when they recall the whole incident. I was deeply inspired and touched by the story.”

Akshay feels there is an urgent need to show the movies that show India in its full glory and what it has done for its countrymen. He goes on, “America mein 100 films banti hai and out of them 70 movies will show America is the best country. Kuch bhi ho, even an alien attack, toh bhi America will save the whole world. Then why can’t India We should also make films like America does and let people know the greatness of India. In fact, I would like to make a film where Indians save the Americans.”

For Akshay, it is not mentally draining to do three to four films a year. He concludes, “Main Dilli ka rehna wala hun, main naaptol ke baat karta hoon (I am a Delhiite and I speak in measured words). It is all about time management. For doing a film, you don’t need more than 60 days and if you do for instance, 4 movies in a year then it is just 240 days out of 365. I think that’s not too much for me.”