It’s a sureness that we have seen before. I am reminded of my first interaction with him at a press conference before the release of Don, where he maintained his calm through a volley of indignant questions from senior film journalists over tampering a classic. He never let his defence crumble. And he stands vindicated. The original script of Don 2 is complete and ready for shoot around mid-2009. “But no more remakes,” he says. “I have made the only film I wanted to remake. Don was a film that had held my attention for all these years, so by making it, I finally have exorcised my spirits and got it out of my system.”
After years in public glare, Akhtar now gives out a sense of equanimity, irrespective of the ups and downs of his career. “People could hate you or love you, but if they like your film that’s all you really care in the end,” he says.

As regards his career’s only flop, the expensively mounted Lakshya (2004), he still maintains that nothing went wrong with the film. “It, till date, is a really good film. I was disappointed with its box-office performance, not because it didn’t earn much, but the fact that not many people saw it enough to have either liked or disliked it,” he says.
These days, we also see a more accessible Akhtar, though he keeps his kids and family out of his profiles. The industry has stopped calling him arrogant. “Arrogant and me?” he laughs. “Having not been used to the public eye for many years, it took me sometime to get used to it. I felt my life is personal and I should keep it to myself. Maybe that made me a little silent, and that got misconstrued as arrogance,” he says.
Akhtar, though, isn’t ready to be a one-man army yet. “Acting is quite a lonely job. You have to constantly remain within a character. To act and direct at the same time is too difficult. People like Guru Dutt and Raj Kapoor have done it in the past, so it’s possible to do so. But I feel a certain degree of skill and understanding of format needs to be reached before I can do it confidently.” As of now, he is only ready to rock on.

... contd.