Maddy, have you always admired Kamal Haasan ? Oh absolutely, he is to Tamil cinema what Bachchan Saab is to Hindi cinema. I remember my excitement when I was to do a film with Kamalji. It was to be directed by Priyadarshan.
To discuss the project, I spent the most unforgettable four hours with Kamalji. For the first three hours we talked about everything under the sun except the film. We had lunch together.
As he talked about his life, work and friends, I realized what made him who he was. Then we finally got down to discussing the film. He told me the script of a road movie, which was absolutely fabulous.
After I heard him out, I told him I want to do the film exactly the way he narrated it to me. ‘Just take me on and teach me,’ I told him. The way he enacted my scenes and his own was simply amazing.
I wanted to do my own scenes exactly the way he showed me. You were super-excited? I was! I remember Kamalji paid me a really big backhanded compliment. He said he needed someone for my role who was spontaneous, so he wouldn’t have to worry about what that character is doing.
Kamalji is such a pathbreaker. I believe there are two kinds of people in world, the reasonable and unreasonable kind. The reasonable man adapts to the world while the unreasonable man tries to bring the world around to his point of view.
All progress in the world is due to unreasonable men like Kamalji. Go on? Here’s a man who’s always pushing the envelope regardless of the repercussions. That’.