Mumbai: Actor Vijay Varma, who ventured into Bollywood with a negative character and has proved himself as an accomplished actor over time, now wants to shed his negative image and explore romance.
The actor will soon be seen playing a lover boy in Manish Malhotra’s ‘Gustaakh Ishq’, with Fatima Sana Sheikh as his co-star.
In a conversation with IANS, the actor opened up about consciously breaking his image as an antagonist and stepping into the world of romance.
“It was a break that I wanted from the negative parts because they tend to weigh down on you. I was constantly told by fans, ‘We hated you in that film; we hated you, but you are a brilliant actor.’” So I wanted to get rid of the word “hate” and call it something else. So be it IC-814 or Jaane Jaa
ne or Murder Mubarak or anything else; I just wanted to take a break from that,” Vijay said.
Talking about ‘Gustaakh Ishq’, Vijay said, “It is a sweet, romantic film. It has love, it has worship, it has sin, it has worship! There are a lot of things in it that were there for me to explore as an actor.”
“Anything that you do new tends to take a bit of time to adjust to, and it can be difficult. I remember when I was in “Pink. Here, in Gustaakh Ishq, I would say that the challenge was to pull off such poetic dialogues and to stand in front of ‘THE’ Naseeruddin Shah, the legend, and to not shiver, yet manage to be believable, and to convey all the emotions correctly. It was a new challenge!” he added.
“Whenever you switch or change yourself, it can be a bit challenging. But it’s fun. And then you keep doing it for a while, and then you feel like doing something new. So my next step will be to try to go towards comedy.”
Produced under Manish Malhotra’s new production banner Stage5 Production, ‘Gustaakh Ishq’ is a love story of passion and unspoken desire, set in the bylanes of Purani Dilli (Old Delhi) and the fading kothis (vintage houses) of Punjab.