From being a photographer who also acted in plays, Boman Irani has come to be recognised as one of the most versatile actors of Bollywood, as much at ease with comic roles like Dr Asthana and Lucky Singh in the Munnabhai series as with tragic ones like Rana Jayawardhan in Eklavya. For one who started out selling potato chips, Irani has come a long way. In an interview with The Indian Express Editor-in-Chief Shekhar Gupta on NDTV 24x7’s Walk the Talk, he talks about his favourite roles, his love for taking on challenges, and his fear of being alone
• My guest today is one of Mumbai's Parsi Colony's most famous residents, Boman Irani. And it's really unfair to cast you as a Parsi, because you're a Sikh one day, Delhi Punjabi the other, a Rajput king, a Catholic, all equally convincingly.

Sometimes, it's most difficult to play the role most close to you. When you are around, you don't notice most of things you should be noticing. Sometimes a foreign photographer comes to India and shoots it better than you. But the Parsi I played in Being Cyrus was thankfully not a lot like me. Not like that, I'm not a horrible guy . . . but he was a murderer.

• A philanderer, a wife-beater . . .

(Laughs) So you know. But I think it works very well when the character is not like you. You need that much more research to find out what you could be. Any human being is capable of being anything.

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