Rishi Kapoor on having a blast in his second innings and why Ranbir did not want to be the next SRK

Almost all your life, you played a romantic lead. It is easy to be liked when you are the affable one in the story, but how do you make an out and out negative character strike a chord with the audience?
This question came to my mind for the first time when I did Bol Radha Bol. It was a double role, where the bad one was more likeable than the good. The trick was with my image, my looks. The audience thought I was the naughty one. But you can't use the same yardstick for Agneepath. It was not the chocolate boy hero being the bad one. And in Aurangzeb, I play a very different negative character - not the butcher or pimp of Agneepath. But a corrupt man who would do anything to achieve his goals. He is bad, the kind of person we read about every day, involved with some scam or the other. And hence, more relatable.

Do you enjoy your work all the more now that you don't have to conform to a certain image or carry the burden of box-office success?
Absolutely! I am enjoying the best phase of my career now. Different characters, different films... romantic, comic, villainous... I have been experimenting with my look, my wigs, moustaches...

You seem to be having fun...
Well, I owe that to myself and my fans. Goddammit! For 25 years, I only sang songs in my films. Right now, it is time to act! That's why I was never taken seriously as an actor...

That's not true!
No, it is. People did not think I was a qualified actor but now I am having a blast...

Do you think this is because film writing is better today?
You can't say that. Thing is, multiplexes are offering space for challenging cinema. In my days, any hero at any given point had a minimum of four films based on the lost and found formula. Today's audiences are more demanding. Besides, the classics of our times are irrelevant to the audiences that watch Ranbir's films. Cinema reflects society and the concerns are very different now. Thankfully, there are two schools of cinema - the escapist and the relatable. The latter caters to doctors, engineers, lawyers who want to see entertaining and enriching films they can discuss. This window was not there for us.

You have been working for decades...
Forty years since Bobby...

How did you see yourself through the phase when nothing worked out?
I didn't see the bad phase for too long. For 25 years of my career, I was constantly working as a romantic hero, against the trend of action heroes. I was never number one but always the saleable one. I did not lose that position but gave it up voluntarily because I started putting on weight and my wife told me I was boring on the screen. Besides, the young Khans had just arrived. I was 45 and voluntarily retired. I took a break for three months and directed Aa Ab laut Chalein. Once that was released, I was back on the bandwagon with Kuch Khatti Kuch Meethi and Raju Chacha. My second phase started in 2000, and now I work 25 days a month, even youngsters don't have seven releases in the seven months.

Which has been the most creatively satisfying role for you in this phase?
Do Dooni Chaar. The director had the balls to cast Rishi Kapoor in the lead when he was a nobody. The film gave me a great creative high.

Does Ranbir ask for your inputs while picking his projects?
When he started off, he told his mother that 'I do not conform to the stereotype of the hero with a twisted cap, a skateboard, the way Mr Shah Rukh Khan had envisaged. I wanna play my age. I don't see myself playing basketball and singing with 40 dancers behind me. If I fail, I fail, but I wanna do something different, play people from different walks of life'. Neetu and I thought it was brave and it was the (claps) right thing to do! People love him because he broke from the tradition at a time when younger actors were still doing what their predecessors had done.

What does Neetu-ji have to say about your second innings?
Neetu is happy. I am enjoying myself, not getting on anybody's nerves. We Kapoors are passionate about everything we do. God forbid if any male heir is not interested in films, but making shoes, I am sure he will be damn good at it as well.