What will be, will be: Jimmy Sheirgill on his 'outsider' journey, his choices, survival

Radhika Bhirani
rbhirani@gmail.com

When Jimmy Sheirgill landed a small, but significant part as a terrorist in Gulzar's Maachis (1996) which marked his big screen debut, he used to visit a Gurudwara in Mumbai's Four Bungalows vicinity. He would bow down, touch his head on the floor, and say, "Itni meher kar lena ki koi ye naa bole ki yeh bura actor hai".

Today, he's just a year short of 25 years since setting out on that journey. A journey he looks back at with pride, but doesn't dwell upon it. A journey where he allowed himself to be guided by his head and heart, rather than go by the rules. A journey where he chose to be a "good actor" than chase stardom.

"He has given me so much that now people say I am underrated, I am a good actor, and so I feel He has given me more than what I asked for. I never asked Him for stardom," the 49-year-old actor tells me with a nonchalance that you'd rarely expect from an actor who has every ingredient of being a star, and yet has remained on the fringes of Bollywood's star system.

That's also done him good, in a way. That pedestal of stardom leads many to conform to the norms. But here is Jimmy, challenging and changing the status quo of the 'Bollywood hero' at every turn.

In his latest turn in the web series Your Honor, Jimmy is seen as a judge and a father who is at first seen as idealistic, moralistic and ethical. And so, I ask him, how easy or difficult has it been for him, as an artiste in this cut-throat world of showbiz, to uphold these ideas and values?

His answer is as simple as he comes across himself: "Nothing is easy when you take that path. But I am glad that I'm surviving."

The question about survival, especially for an 'outsider' in the film industry, is one that has been raised over and over again in the past few weeks, in the wake of young and talented actor Sushant Singh Rajput's death. Nepotism, campism, groupism and the like have been the fulcrum of debates and discussions which continue to rage on.

Jimmy has been a different breed of 'outsider', who chose to choose his own path right from the start. 

He started his career under the direction of a creative powerhouse such as Gulzar, playing a bearded terrorist with a slightly heavy mane. He followed it up with a sweet role as a love-struck student, all clean-shaven, in Yash Raj Films' Mohabbatein. That really set the stage for a flurry of chocolate boy roles for him. But that's when Jimmy changed gears a bit to experiment with film genres, directors, characters and well, his luck. He went ahead and took on roles, length notwithstanding, in Munnabhai M.B.B.S., Yahaan, A Wednesday, Saheb, Biwi Aur Gangster, Special 26 and Tanu Weds Manu among others.

Notably, he also worked with first-time directors of the likes of Tigmanshu Dhulia, Shoojit Sircar, Neeraj Pandey, Rajkumar Hirani, Rahul Dholakia, Aanand L Rai, who are today not just his good friends, but also some of Hindi cinema's most appreciated storytellers. 

For him, the 'outsider treatment', is thus what he dismisses by saying, "Hua bhi hoga toh maine dhyaan nahin diya... I was more bothered about what I was going to do next rather than who was going to offer me what next. If I was told that 'You're going to be doing this next', and suddenly I'd get to know that the film was not happening or I was not doing it, I had a positive approach to go and do a third film. I would say, 'Okay if that's not happening, it's my luck'. And by the end of it, that one thing I was supposed to do, never got made and never got released. And what I did by default, became a big hit. So, it's all a part of it."

Jimmy, according to one of his fans on Quora, seemed poised for great things but he seems to be too straightforward to play camp games or manipulate his way into a role he deserves.

That, the actor admits, is a correct reading.

"I have never gone and asked any person 'Don't take that person, take me'. I've never done that in my life and I've never felt the need to do it. I have been happy with the kind of roles that have come my way and I have been able to pick and choose the best out of them. I have never tried to 'maaro a laath' on anybody else's stomach. I am friends with good directors and producers, but I can't expect them to give me a role every time they make a movie. If they call me, fine. Otherwise I'm not going to call and say, 'Oh you're making this film, why don't you take me?' I don't even say that jokingly," he says, and quickly adds, "Itni meri self respect hai."

The years gone by are also not what he thinks about and analyses. Remind me of his upcoming silver jubilee in the industry next year, and he breaks into guffaws.

"See, now you're thinking about it. I am not. I don't think too much about all this. There's no use in doing that. What we need to be doing is working hard and thinking about what we're going to do next. I would much rather spend half an hour, 45 minutes thinking about a character I'm portraying or a story that I'm working on than think of 'Wow, 25 years, let's party!'," he quips.

One thing, however, that makes him particularly proud is how having no one to guide him in this labyrinth of an industry, left him to blame nobody else but himself for anything that ever went wrong in his career. He took his own decisions, and stood by them.

"After Maachis, whenever anybody used to call me and and see that I was clean-shaven and had short hair, they would say, 'No, no, we are actually looking for that bearded guy'. And I used to be like, I am this clean-shaven guy and I want to do something else now. So, they would take their time and say 'Oh, but we wanted somebody who looked like that.' So I would move on. I would never feel bad that 'shit man, I wish I had kept my hair like that'," Jimmy recounts.

Getting typecast hasn't really been his cup of tea.

There was a phase after Mohabbatein, when Jimmy was caught up doing Mere Yaar Ki Shaadi Hai, Dil Hai Tumhaara, Dil Vil Pyaar Vyaar, Kehtaa Hai Dil Baar Baar, all in the romantic drama zone. That's also around the same time he got married to his ladylove Priyanka, and his hands were so full with work that he felt what he describes as being "a guest at my own wedding".

"We didn't even get time to go on a honeymoon, because I had commitments. I was working day and night for one and a half years. At the same time, these films kept releasing.... I was doing Tigmanshu Dhulia's Haasil also then. I really enjoyed working on that film, and I felt like moving on to do some more serious kind of stuff. I never wanted to get stuck in a role. I felt I had done enough of dancing around trees and singing songs, and moving on the next level was important, otherwise it was just going to become too monotonous. Either I would have lost interest or people would have lost interest in watching me do the same things again and again," Jimmy says, reflecting upon what marked the turning point in his career.

He claims he even returned signing amounts for some projects, realising that he needed to take a break, not just for the benefit of his career, but also to balance things out on the personal front.

When he came back, an offer for Munnabhai M.B.B.S. was waiting in the wings.

"I read the script and loved it. I thought it was an amazing film that somebody was making," recounts Jimmy, who increasingly started getting attracted to unique scripts and concepts which at that point, wouldn't seem "safe" in trade parlance.

It didn't come without a bout of insecurity -- to take a detour from playing solo leads and two-hero projects to do character roles. But that's all in the past.

"I may have asked myself, 'Am I doing the right thing by saying don't want to do this and I want to do something else'. But today, when I look back, I can say very proudly that I had the balls to do that at that point of time," says the actor, who was questioned by people around him about his choice to reduce song-and-dance affairs and to pick genres which the audience had not warmed up to back then. 

"Today, people love different kinds of stuff. Give them anything different and they will cling on to it. But in those days, it was very difficult to explain to people that what kind of cinema are you trying to be a part of. So then you yourself started feeling a little unsure of yourself. But the next moment you said, 'Whatever will happen, we'll see. This is what I am going to do'. And then you go ahead and do that."

That's what Jimmy did.

Today, he is on the front foot with his presence on streaming platforms. After a praise-worthy performance as gangster Amarpal Singh in Rangbaaz Phirse, he has impressed with his measured performance in Your Honor, a series that he is glad has appealed to a wider family audience thanks to its sub-text of a father-son bond.

Variety, as you can tell from both the shows, is again his deal maker or breaker, in the OTT space, where he knows, only "good content" will sell well, or the audience will switch off or switch over.