Firdaus Jamal - I was born to act |
Written by English NewsPaper/Dawn/Others | |||
After working for over 30 years in TV, film, theatre and radio, the versatile Pride of Performance winning actor has lately taken to directing and producing serials and even set up his own produc-tion company. Sitting in his modestly furnished, newly established office in Lahore's busy Central Plaza, he explains why he has shifted towards direction.
And he isn't? "No!" he roars. "I've worked for 28 years as an actor, without doing anything else. I had the opportunity to direct, but I always felt that I should concen-trate only on acting, and that I must specialize in one field. It is only now that I realize that I can afford to branch out." Firdaus doesn't necessarily see turning to direction as a natural consequence for an actor. "When I am acting, I am watching everything. I'm absorbing things, like what sort of lighting is used, what the camera placing is like, what the mood of the scene is, the kind of tempo it requires...things like that. This is part and parcel of being an actor. I've been observ-ing all of this for many years now so I think it's easier for me to slip into the director's shoes, compared to a lot of other peo¬ple who have very little or no experience at all in either field." But do good actors necessari¬ly make good directors? "Certainly," he declares. "Abid Ali has proved himself in this regard. Look at Brando. He took up direction after he had worked as an actor for 25 years. Look at Mel Gibson."
"Not many people know the fact that I began my career by assisting the director of a Pashto film. I had done my matriculation at the time. A friend of my father, Zahoor Hussein Gilani, was directing the film. This was in 1971. You see, it's always better to start by assisting a director," he goes on. "Even Steven Spielberg started by assisting George Lucas."
The actor has the experience of working in all four showbiz mediums. He received the Pride of Performance award at a very young age and was nominated several times for TV serials as well as stage plays. Firdaus has won many awards in his career, including the best broadcaster award from Radio Pakistan. He was also declared the 'Voice of the Millennium' in the year 2001 by Pakistan Broadcasting Corporation. But, he couldn't quite cut it in films. "I don't think I did any great films," he admits. "I have per¬formed in more than 40, but I didn't get any proper roles." By proper roles, does he mean that of a hero? "Well, unfortunately, here they consider only heroes as actors. Since they never tried me as a hero, I only got to play the supporting characters."
"I worked hard in that film where, again, I played the villain. But, sadly enough, the film proved to be a big flop. Firdaus Jamal says that at the time when he did Pashto films, their standard was quite good.
"There were some excellent Pashto productions in those days," he reminisces. "My first acting assignment was as a 100-year-old baba, and I was only 16 or 17 at the time. It was for a film which was based on a Pashto folk tale, Babu Naye Sher A/am. Somehow they couldn't get hold of the actor who was to play the part, so I stepped in. In that sense, you can say that my beginning in acting was as an 'actor' rather than as a 'star' or a 'hero'." Another important milestone in the actor's film career was the Urdu movie Alladin, which starred Babra Sharif and Faisal in the lead and was directed by Iqbal Kashmiri. His all-time popular theatre play remains the classic Anarkali, which was penned by Imtiaz AH Taj in which Firdaus got to play Prince Saleem.
I'd even go to the extent of saying that I have become more ambitious today, as an actor. But it's sad that there aren't any good roles being written. Earlier, there used to be a kind of competition among actors." His tone changes into one of nostalgia. "We'd work all day and all night thinking about how to improve on our part. Even today, when I gel a role I try my best to make sure that it does not resemble any of my previous perfor-mances."
by USMI Source : www.dawn.com
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