I’ve practically quit smoking and drinking: Saif Ali Khan

safia@coastaldigest.com (TNN)
December 20, 2012

Saif-Ali-Khan

Mumbai, December 20: Saif Ali Khan, the 42-year-old Nawab of Pataudi, says his calling card even today is that he is a Bollywood actor. Post the success of Cocktail and his marriage to Kareena Kapoor, he's in a super-happy place in his career. Here are excerpts from a chat with the actor, who also happens to be a royal....


It's most uncharacteristic that you are doing films back-to-back. Are you making up for lost time?

There are no rules in showbiz. Even if you don't work for a year, it's fine as long as you know your job. Earlier, we used to feel that if you didn't do a certain amount of work within a stipulated time frame, it's wrong. But then, you realise there need not be any fixed pattern. I took almost a 10-month sabbatical of sorts, because I had to sort things out in my personal life. I was more interested in that side of my life then. Now, I will do at least three movies a year.

You admit that you are in a happy space personally and professionally...

Yes, I have managed to compartmentalise my life. When I'm working, I'm working. When I need to go out and meet people, I do that. I enjoy coming home after work and collecting art to do up my home. I find it all coming together quite well. And I can see my parents' genes in me. I have a sense of who I am and unless something terrible happens, I see a good future. It is all great, touch wood.

Is Kareena responsible for this change?

No and yes. Personally, she gives me that sense of well-being. And as far as career goes, I found that I was thinking and talking too much and not really doing enough. I spent three years making Agent Vinod, which didn't work out the way I wanted it to. Being a producer is good, but I am primarily an actor and I do not want to lose sight of that. One gets paid for what one is good at.

You've started reaching out to more people professionally...

Again, not entirely true. But yes, I have come to respect and trust the people I work with. It is great to go out and meet various people and work with them. This year, I intend to leave myself in the hands of filmmakers I trust. If I like the script, I don't want to ask any further questions. This process is peaceful for me and for those who are making the film. My secretary Zahid has great commercial sense. If he sees something in a script that is good, I value it. There are filmmakers who understand the masses of India. I am not a writer, so perhaps, I'm unable to connect instantly. I must recognise my strengths and weaknesses and trust someone. And not question too much. When actors ask too many questions, it can be very annoying.

You are also looking better than you did a few months ago. Is Kareena monitoring your diet?

I'm the Nawab with a Spartan diet. A few years ago, I could put away a few rotis and knock down a couple of drinks without being too conscious. Now, I enjoy the one piece of bread that I eat. I eat it very slowly and have learnt to relish it. I've practically quit smoking and drinking.

Is being 42 making you conscious?

Age is a relative thing. If you don't smoke or drink and respect your body, you can look great at 42. On the other hand, if you smoke and take drugs, you must realise that you are not in your 20s and you're not going to get away with it.

Keeping fit is a lifestyle, right?

It has to be a lifestyle now. Even drinking and smoking have becoming boring and repetitive like all other negative things. It feels great to wake up feeling healthy, awake and alert. I love waking up in the morning, taking a deep breath, reading the newspaper and going to the gym — as opposed to carrying a hangover right until lunch. That's horrible. It is nice to let off steam once in a while, but I find myself less involved with people in that sense. I like staying at home, reading a book, having a chat with my wife, a quiet dinner and going to bed early. I don't want to drink half a bottle of whisky and look 50 the next day. I have become an anti-drinking, anti-smoking agent.

So, you are a Nawab who isn't debauched?

If I may say so, the Nawab of Pataudi is very different from the other Nawabs. My grandfather, father and others before me, have been very austere and careful with money. They have been very good sportsmen; flamboyant, but disciplined. Their tastes are not flashy. They were good-looking and understated.

We are not debauched, fat, unhealthy people who watch mujra. There have been nawabs who probably didn't do anything for anyone as much as they did for themselves, which is perhaps why so many royal families are defunct or extinct. They didn't have the staying power. You cannot live in a poor country and be unrealistic. The royalty must be a celebration like it is in England.

We hear your price as an actor has shot up.

It has almost doubled. And I don't mean to say this in a vulgar kind of way. In a country where everything is so uncertain, my career is the best investment I have made. I must be careful with my diet, because it is related to my career. Acting can give you a lot more than what share-market and telecom business can. This hundred per cent jump in showbiz is absent even in realty business. The cinema halls are growing. We are making more hits than we have in years. For once, our writers and directors are more in sync with the audience. Since we have delivered hit after hit, everyone's prices have doubled. It is a wonderful time to be working in films. It is making me feel that I should respect my profession more.

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Agencies
July 31,2020

Mumbai, Jul 31: Maharashtra Leader of Opposition and BJP leader Devendra Fadnavis on Friday said that the Enforcement Directorate should carry out an investigation in actor Sushant Singh Rajput's suicide case.

"There is a huge public sentiment about handing over #SushantSinghRajput case to CBI but looking at the reluctance of State Government, atleast @dir_ed ED can register an ECIR since misappropriation and money laundering angle has come out," tweeted Fadnavis.

Meanwhile, Union Minister Ram Vilas Paswan said that no FIR had been registered in Maharashtra yet and that the case must be handed over to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).

"There is a confrontation between two states and there has been no FIR registered yet in Maharashtra. Chirag (Paswan) had spoken to CM Thackeray that there should be CBI probe. All political leaders are demanding for it. It should be handed over to CBI," Paswan said.

A team of the Bihar Police that arrived in Mumbai on Tuesday, recorded statements of two persons, including actor Sushant Singh Rajput's sister, on Wednesday in connection with the case.

An FIR was filed by Sushant Singh Rajput's father against actor Rhea Chakraborty in Bihar on Tuesday.

Rajput was found dead in his Mumbai residence on June 14.

According to the Maharashtra Police, statements of 41 people, including filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt, film critic Rajeev Masand, director-producer Sanjay Leela Bhansali, and filmmaker Aditya Chopra have been recorded in the investigation so far.

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News Network
January 18,2020

Mumbai, Jan 18: Actor Shabana Azmi was injured in an accident on Saturday afternoon on the Mumbai-Pune Expressway in Maharashtra's Raigad district, an official said.

The incident took place around 3.30 pm near Khalapur, over 60 km from Mumbai, when the car in which she was traveling rammed into a truck, said Raigad Superintendent of Police Anil Paraskar.

She was rushed to MGM hospital in Navi Mumbai and was undergoing treatment, he said.

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News Network
February 6,2020

Los Angeles, Feb 6: U.S. silver screen legend Kirk Douglas, the son of Jewish Russian immigrants who rose through the ranks to become one of Hollywood's biggest stars, has died, his family said Wednesday. He was 103.

One of the last survivors of the golden age of cinema and the father of Oscar-winning actor and film-maker Michael Douglas, the Spartacus actor was renowned for the macho tough guy roles he took on in around 90 movies over a six-decade career.

"It is with tremendous sadness that my brothers and I announce that Kirk Douglas left us today at the age of 103," Michael Douglas said in a statement posted to Facebook.

"To the world he was a legend, an actor from the golden age of movies who lived well into his golden years, a humanitarian whose commitment to justice and the causes he believed in set a standard for all of us to aspire to."

Douglas was Oscar-nominated for his roles as a double-crossing and womanizing boxer in Champion (1949), a ruthless movie producer in The Bad and the Beautiful (1952) and tortured artist Vincent Van Gogh in Lust for Life (1956).

But his only Academy Award came in 1995 -- an honorary lifetime achievement statuette "for 50 years as a creative and moral force in the motion picture community."

Douglas is survived by second wife Anne Buydens, 100, and three sons. A fourth child, Eric, died of a drug overdose in his 40s, in 2004.

"(To) me and my brothers Joel and Peter he was simply Dad, to Catherine (Zeta-Jones), a wonderful father-in-law, to his grandchildren and great grandchild their loving grandfather, and to his wife Anne, a wonderful husband," said Michael.

"Kirk's life was well lived, and he leaves a legacy in film that will endure for generations to come, and a history as a renowned philanthropist who worked to aid the public and bring peace to the planet."

Kirk Douglas rose to the heights of Hollywood from an impoverished childhood as the son of Jewish Russian immigrants.

He was one of the last survivors of the golden age of cinema, often portraying the macho and not-always-likeable tough guy in around 90 movies over a six-decade career.

With charming dimples and a cleft chin, Douglas was a renowned ladies' man but also admitted to being angry into adulthood because of his difficult New York childhood.

"I still have anger in me," he said in a New York Times article in 1988 after the release of his first autobiography.

"I think I'm loath to let it go because I think that anger was the fuel I used in accomplishing what I wanted to do; you see it in my films, you see it in imitations people do of me."

Screen legend

The role that perhaps immortalized him as a star was that of a rebellious Roman Empire slave turned gladiator in the 1960 epic Spartacus.

Douglas also produced the film, which took four Oscars. He won praise for listing in the credits the real name of Hollywood screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, who was blacklisted for his Communist sympathies and wrote under a pen name.

There were Oscar nominations for his roles as a double-crossing and womanizing boxer in Champion (1949), a ruthless movie producer in The Bad and the Beautiful (1952) and of tortured artist Vincent Van Gogh in Lust for Life (1956).

But his only Oscar came in 1995 as an honorary lifetime achievement award "for 50 years as a creative and moral force in the motion picture community."

Other major acting roles were as a French private in a botched suicidal mission in World War I in Paths of Glory (1957) and American Western legend Doc Holliday in Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957).

"Often cast as a villain, amoral climber or self-obsessed grabber, Kirk Douglas took care to color his hard edges with suggestions of pain, wit and sympathy," says American Film Institute, which ranks him as 17th on its list of the greatest male screen legends.

In the 1970s he stood behind the camera, directing Scalawag (1973) and Posse (1975).

He also took up writing, penning his first autobiography The Ragman's Son in 1988 and following with around 10 other titles.

In the autobiography, Douglas writes: "I always worked in the theory that when you play a weak character, find a moment when he's strong. And if you're playing a strong character, find a moment when he's weak."

Tough childhood

Douglas was born in New York on December 9, 1916 to illiterate Jewish Russian immigrants, an only boy with six sisters.

He started out as Issur Danielovitch, later Izzy Demsky. It was tough, he recounted later, with the family poor, anti-Semitism rife and his distant alcoholic father forced to earn a living as a ragman.

"In a sense, I've always felt on the outside, looking in," he said in the New York Times article.

"It's my background, damn it. My father was an illiterate Russian immigrant, a ragman, the lowest rung on the economic scale."

His dream of a way out was through acting and he started in high school, eventually entering the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and changing his name along the way.

To survive he took jobs as a waiter, labourer and porter. In 1941 he hit Broadway but his budding career was interrupted by service in the Navy. After the war, he headed for Hollywood.

His romantic conquests were many, although he once said he had never counted, and included starls such as Rita Hayworth, Marlene Dietrich, Joan Crawford and Ava Gardner.

Douglas' four sons followed him into cinema.

Oscar-winning actor and producer Michael and Joel were from a marriage to actress Diana Webster, whom he divorced in 1951.

Three years later he married Belgian-American Anne Buydens, having Peter and then Eric, who died in 2004 from an accidental overdose.

Douglas has also brushed death: he survived a helicopter crash in 1991 and a massive stroke in 1996 that nearly robbed him of speech.

Around the time of his 100th birthday in 2016, he attributed his remarkable longevity to his second marriage.

"I was lucky enough to find my soulmate 63 years ago, and I believe our wonderful marriage and our nightly 'golden hour' chats have helped me survive all things," he said in celebrity magazine Closer Weekly.

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