I'm a reclusive actor: Siddharth

The last game he was associated with in the movies was carrom. However, South star Siddharth (in Hindi cinema, think RDB and Striker; in the latter, he played a carrom player) is a complete cricket buff.

He was in Delhi during the IPL to watch a match in which the Hyderabad team was playing, and he says, “I live in Hyderabad, I’m a recognised cine star there now, so it was obvious for me to support Team Hyderabad. IPL is about picking a loyalty and seeing it through. It’s fun when you have a team to support.”
Like some other actors, he’s quite active online too. But even there, it’s about cricket. Recently, he tweeted a ball-by-ball commentary of one of the IPL matches. “I tweet about cricket a lot, as I totally love the game. It is the space where I can be myself, and I like Twitter as a medium as there is no censorship. It’s all about what I’m thinking and the way I want to express myself. No miscommunication or misinterpretation,” Siddharth says.

Tell him that this free flow of thoughts has landed many in trouble, and he says, “I like the way Gandhi defined censorship – ‘If you don’t like something, shut your eyes.’ I think it is the best kind of censorship. We all have lots of issues to think about, and I think picking on films, cricket or people as such and then dissecting what they are saying is just timepass that other people indulge in.” Siddharth has other reasons to be active online as well. “See, I can’t comment on other people, but I’m a reclusive actor. I don’t make too many appearances; I don’t attend many parties or functions. For me, it is very important to have some kind of connect with my fans, and I think social networking is the easiest way for me to stay in touch,” he says.

But to get back to cricket again, Siddharth reminisces about how he and his friends used to watch Test matches at Feroz Shah Kotla stadium. “We were crazy about Test cricket,” he remembers. “I have watched many matches at Kotla, when I used to study in Delhi.”

Calling Test cricket the purest form of cricket, Siddharth says that it will always remain an important part of cricket lovers’ lives. “In our generation, we saw Test cricket become one-day internationals, and people went on and on about how one-day matches would kill Test cricket. But when it happened, people loved one-dayers, and Test cricket retained its importance. Now that the 50-over game has become a 20-over game, it’s still cricket. The passion for the game is still the same,” explains Siddharth.

But what about protests that cricket is slowly killing other sports? “I don’t know why people go on and on about that. If other sports are not doing well, they should pull up their socks and do something, cricket should not be blamed for it,” reasons Siddharth. Drawing parallels between cricket and Bollywood, he says, “If Shah Rukh Khan is the most popular actor in Hindi cinema, he should not be made to apologise for it. The actors who don’t make it to the top say, ‘Arre yaar, sab movies toh usko mil jaati hain.’ If SRK is getting all the movies, that’s because he is good, so he should not be made to feel bad about being good. Similarly, if cricket is getting all the attention and sponsors, it is because people enjoy watching it. We used to be a country that did not have an edge in any sport, but now we are the superpower in cricket.”

And does Siddharth play cricket? “In Hyderabad, when I’m not shooting, we just pick a Sunday and book a stadium and play a day and night match. We play proper cricket, under lights and all. In fact, in Telugu cinema, a lot of young actors play cricket,” he tells us. Speaking of shooting, what films is he currently working on? “I’ve got two films right now. In one of them, I play a village bumpkin, and have even learnt a new dialect for it. Both are Telegu films, and this whole year is big for me because I have got almost Rs 100 crore riding on me for the next 12-14 months. This is the biggest year of my career.”

He’s also expressed a desire to get into production and direction, hasn’t he? “Production will hopefully start next year, as we’re trying to get our business plans in order. That’s why I’m not taking on a lot of work as an actor,” informs Siddharth. “I came here to be a director and producer, that is why I trained under Mani Ratnam. But I became an actor. So, it’s about getting back to what I wanted to do in the first place, without neglecting my acting career,” he explains. With production plans, is there anything specific that he wants to bring to Bollywood? Siddharth, who, incidentally, also sings, answers, “I want to bring musicals to India. The old school sort of Hollywood musical, where the actor sings all the songs. I’d like to do a film where the dialogue and the music kind of overlap. I think that’s something that I’ll be good at.” Sing-song business plans, wotsay?