Fawad Khan, the dishy dreamboat who leaves women of all ages (and many men too!) weak in the knees, is adorably embarrassed by his effect on the fairer sex. “It’s flattering,” he says, adding, “If you’re an object of flattery and an icon of sorts, it’s always nice.” He isn’t afraid of his immensely good looks overshadowing his power as a performer, as he explains that even an actor like Steve McQueen who grabbed attention in PAPILLON, was one of the greatest sex icons of his time, without it ever eclipsing his performances.
If Fawad doesn’t like to dwell too much on his looks, he is self-admittedly proud of his charm. “If I am vain about something, it is my charm. I do consider myself charming and I can engage people when making conversations. It’s a quality I possess and I proudly flaunt that quality at times.”
This never translates into arrogance and the gorgeous star happens to be an extremely polite person. He likes to think of himself as polite, recalling how he used to be an angry young man, passionate about everything during his growing years – he even had his own rock band called Entity Paradigm then. With time and age, life’s experiences mellow you down. Over the years, he understood that to judge people was the easiest thing in the world, but learning to hold your tongue and opinion is the most difficult. Restraint is the one quality he learnt to imbibe and it made all the difference to his character, he believes.
He admits he has a dark side to him but cautions, “You don’t want to go into that space!” Likening the inside of his mind to THE CELL, the American psychological film that delves into the mind of a serial killer, he laughs off any attempt to probe deeper. His wit, he informs, is wicked. His sense of humour started off being morbid and morose, he claims, something that people don’t generally ‘get’, and they would brush off his quips with ‘God forbid, God forbid…’, without realising he was joking! He reveals that he keeps this side to himself and only lets it peek out in some of his roles. Pity!
Even as we have gushed over his muscular yet subtle performance as a gay man in KAPOOR & SONS, Fawad is careful not to sound like the breezy pro when it comes to acting. “Whenever I face the camera, I always ask the director if I’m overdoing it. I always feel I’m very capable of that, even though they say no.”
His belief that he can overact at times keeps him conscious all the time and careful of not overdoing it. He likes keeping his performances as subtle as possible because he believes in the adage – less is more. He mourns the dearth of subtlety, as he avers that “what subtlety does is that you leave certain things open to the audience. It’s alright if they get offended or don’t get it at all. It’s like an artwork, open to interpretation. It’s more interesting that way,” he finishes. And seeing the depth of his performances, it clear that he’s doing subtlety and doing it very well!
The dreamboat will soon be seen in two Pakistani films, JEEWAN HATHI, a dark comedy which he stars in along with Naseeruddin Shah, and action drama MAULA JATT 2. Of course, there is Karan Johar’s AE DIL HAI MUSHKIL, which stars Aishwarya Rai, Ranbir Kapoor and Anushka Sharma. He’s being very tight-lipped about his role in the film though, revealing that he has a “small, sweet role” in it.
Despite years of acting – remember, he had become a sensation with his TV serials ‘Dastaan’, ‘Humsafar’, and ‘Zindagi Gulzar Hai’ – Fawad reveals that he is still nervous on the sets. Always under-confident when he arrives on a set, he claims that anyone can intimidate him, from the spot boy to the actors. His trick is to try and find his own space. He attributes this to his shy nature and his fear of what might offend others.
In fact, he still has the adorable habit of asking his co-stars about what is the line that he should not cross with them! For himself personally, you can go ahead and surprise him any way you wish – he loves spontaneity! …Yet another reason to love the scrumptious Fawad Khan a tad bit more!
