Akhtar has more acting assignments lined up. Anand’s Surapur The Fakir of Venice is already complete and awaiting an international release. In Luck by Chance, he plays a Delhi actor who comes to Mumbai to realise his Bollywood dreams.
One wonders how he restrained the acting bug so long. The urge, he tells me, had always been there—it just took eight years to come the full circle, from behind the camera to the front. “ Kids don’t know what goes into the making of a film. They want to be the hero. On that level, I too was equally mesmerised by what I saw of Mr Bachchan, Dharmendra, Vinod Khanna and Rishi Kapoor. I was a big fan of all their movies and for me all that anybody would do in a film was to look great, mouth wonderful dialogues, fight, dance…” says Akhtar. And though, eventually, he got drawn more towards the creation of a film, that secret desire never left him. “Which is why when I was asked in interviews during DCH and Lakshya, if I have ever thought of being an actor, I never said no. It’s something I have always been open to doing as long as the right roles come along.”
In all this noise of his acting debut, he still remains a director first. He has reportedly signed a six-movie deal with TV 18 worth Rs 230 crore.
While his last release Don (2006) has been the most successful and acclaimed remake yet, his debut film Dil Chahta Hai (DCH, 2001) is already rated by many as a contemporary classic. “I am very flattered, though I am not sure if the term applies to DCH,” he differs. “If, after 10, 20 or 40 years of a film’s release, people still remember its characters, their dialogues and how much fun they had watching it, that for me puts a film, on a slight cut above else and makes a classic though that might not be the only attribute.” Akhtar, can rest assure —the antics of Sameer (Saif Ali Khan), Akash (Aamir Khan) and Siddharth (Akshaye Khanna) are already a part of a generation’s favourite film lore. He is not too eager to be branded as a youth icon though. “Every cinegoer is my audience, not just the youth,” he says politely but firmly.

... contd.