``My film on Mandela will create a lot of controversy, but then that's the only way I know,'' said Kapur, who is currently locking horns with the Indian censors to save Elizabeth from the cuts, during a talk anchored by Mahesh Bhatt at the Taj Mahal Hotel.

As with Bandit Queen and Elizabeth, the director wants to discard the myths surrounding the historical persona, and recreate instead on screen the human being.

When directing Elizabeth, his cast, including Cate Blanchett and Joseph Fiennes, had researched their subject well and read everything there was to read on their characters.

``But when we began shooting I realised they were acting,'' said Kapur. ``I asked them, `Do you want to mimic Elizabeth, or do you want todiscover her spirit'?'' It is the same thinking-pattern-with-a-difference that prompted the director to reject the script for Mandela that he was shown.

``What I want to do is make a film on a man who has failed,'' said Kapur, adding, ``how do you judge a man? You judge him by his relationships and here is a man who has failed with all his relationships.''

He has already spoken to Mandela's daughter as part of his research, and says, ``When I asked her to talk about her father, she said `What father'?'' Winnie Mandela was ``unavailable'' each time he tried to contact her, while the man who is the focus of Kapur's artistic attention, Mandela, told him, `Shekhar, you can say anything you want, as long as it happened'.

In a leisurely chat with Mahesh Bhatt, with the city's chatterati including Maneka Gandhi, Roshan Seth and Romi Chopra evesdropping with interest, the director of films such as Masoom, Mr India and, of course, Elizabeth spoke about his touch-and-go experience with the Oscars,and his journey from out-of-work actor to being `discovered' by the West.

Honest and forthright (full marks to old friend Bhatt for bringing out the man behind the ``smile which is a cover-up to my fears'') at most times and charming all through, he admitted to being ``disappointed'' at finally making it to Hollywood only to discover that the people he has idolised -- Steven Spielberg, for one -- were only ``ordinary people who were where they were because of chance''.

The Oscar ceremony, for him, ``was very boring'' and quite nerve-wracking ``because you're dying to go to the loo, but you can't because the camera is on''.

He's not disappointed at not having bagged the big Oscar, though, simply because ``if you see where I started out from -- sitting in LA, having broken my father's fixed deposits to get there and wondering if anybody would give me a film to make, I was just glad to be there at the Oscars and getting the attention I was getting.''

He would want to bag the biggie one day, but tillthen, he's just a guy ``who is not a hard worker, but works very hard'' and the director who ``cannot face a film after it is made because I find everything wrong with it''.