Irrfan Khan

Spotlight By: Michael Dance
MichaelDance@TheCinemaSource.com

Irrfan Khan is an unfamiliar face to American audiences, although with any luck that may change. Born in Jaipur, India, Khan took roles in various Indian television programs before hitting it big with the critically acclaimed The Warrior, which garnered Khan international notices thanks to it making the rounds on the festival circuit. Starring roles in Bollywood and Indian films followed, such as Maqbool, an update of Macbeth set in India.

Khan's first appeared in the United States in this past spring's The Namesake, which co-starred Kal Penn and was directed by famous Indian director Mira Nair. Khan's very first role was actually in Nair's breakthrough movie, Salaam Bombay, but he was cut out of the film in the editing room. 'It was my first setback after drama school,' Khan says of the experience. 'So after twelve, thirteen, fourteen years, [Nair] said, 'Here, I owed you a role, here is the role,' so she gave me Namesake. And I said, 'Is this going to change my life'' And she said, 'Don't put that much responsibility on me.'' He laughs.

After working on that film, Khan landed a major role in A Mighty Heart, which opens this Friday. The film is about the true-life story of the kidnapping of journalist Daniel Pearl by Pakistani terrorists and the aftermath that followed. Angelina Jolie stars as Pearl's wife Mariane, and Khan plays a man known only as Captain, the head of the Pakistani Anti-Terrorist Squad, who attempted to crack the case and find Daniel and his kidnappers.

'I couldn't meet him, I couldn't talk to him, because he's from Pakistan, he's from the police department, he's not supposed to talk about his cases to a person who doesn't belong to his country,' Khan says of the real man he's portraying. 'And the case itself was a very sensitive case. The production company promised me they would arrange a meeting with him, and I was supposed to go and meet him in Paris; at the last moment I came to know that he's not in touch. He's disappeared.

'There were so many questions I wanted to ask him'you have this information in the book that the ATS department, the Anti-Terrorist Squad, was recently formed in Pakistan, because earlier there was no department like that in Pakistan. And they were not [equipped] at all. Like, they had these two telephones, and there's three or four people. There were no people, there was no office, there was no telephone, no fax machine; there was a car, but it was a rundown car. So how did they go about it, what was his system' I really wanted to know so many things'because his life would not remain the same after this case. He has to deal with it all his life after this. There were forces in Pakistan which never wanted him to do what he was doing.'

In the middle of the film, for about fifteen or twenty minutes, Mariane is absent from the film as Captain takes center stage. Through one long night, we follow him as he tries to capture all the kidnappers and associates in an attempt to follow the trail straight to Pearl himself. Khan shines brilliantly in the spotlight. "That situation for Captain was a very peculiar situation," he says. "He had only that night; he had to crack that case, that night. He has to catch all these three links in one night. If he doesn't do that, if morning comes, people will come to know that some people have been picked up by the police. Word will go around, and the rest of the people will safeguard themselves. And he knew who he was dealing with. They are people who are connected. They are people who were deeply, deeply motivated. He is in immense hurry to find out, so it's a very, very complex situation."

Being the head of the Anti-Terrorist Squad in Pakistan, Captain enjoys a freer rein over the men he interrogates that night than an American policeman would. Yet he does not go so far as to torture them, and he speaks to them in even, measured tones. "That cannot be an option to typically torture someone to bring information out of them," Khan says. "They would never, ever speak if you go about it in an ordinary way or if you show your anger. I think it would be easy for them to block themselves."

Khan remembers when the story first broke onto the news in late 2001. 'I remember the news, it was shocking news for me, this case, but we never came to know what really, really happened and how people suffered and what Mariane made out of that tragedy; what was her take on that tragedy. That's a unique thing, you know, that's an unusual take on a personal tragedy. That's what remained with me, and that was the most important thing for me, how she deals with this tragedy.'

As such, he said he enjoyed working with Jolie immensely. He beams when she's mentioned. 'Oh, it was a pleasure. A generous woman. So brave as an actor, and so down to earth. And the most important thing is, she cares for the story. I have seen so many actors who are more bothered about themselves as an actor rather than being part of a story. My beliefs as an actor are that you are supposed to be there to tell a story, your objective is to communicate a story to the audience'she really cared for the story; she was there for the story. I respect her for that. She was very attentive, a very spontaneous actor.'

For all the flattery he lays on Jolie, he matches it when speaking of his director, Michael Winterbottom. 'The best thing about him is, he trusts actors,' Khan says. 'Once he's done the casting, he allows you to interpret the character the way you want to. He trusts your sensibilities. He trusts you to be a part of creating the story. It's not like, 'I have in my mind the way Captain is, so you make Captain the way I think.' He makes you a partner in that creation.'

Winterbottom's fast-paced, free-form shooting style was also a plus. 'Even in Hollywood, or Bollywood, or anywhere, people rarely shoot films like that, which are easier for an actor to be in, more interesting, and a pleasure, because you really are connected to the material, connected to substance, you know, you're not just there pretending to be somebody, you're part of the experience.'

What comes across most of all when listening to Khan is to hear his enthusiasm for his chosen career. 'Sometimes you enjoy it, you like being engaged in something, you know' And I really enjoy getting engaged in that sort of things, that's why I became an actor,' he says. 'Sometimes I don't enjoy myself being myself, you know, sometimes it becomes boring. Sometimes you want to be somebody else. Sometimes you want to experience something which really stays with you.'

Khan got into acting when he was young in a rather roundabout way: 'I wanted to be a cricketer. You know, in cricket. I was selected for a very junior level, I was supposed to [pay] fees for that, but my father, you know, didn't allow it. Because he didn't think that playing was a profession'I hated studies, I just wanted to be grown up and do whatever I want to do, I was too much in a hurry. And incidentally I saw some film, and the actor, his behavior just stayed with me. Because he did some kind of double-take kind of thing, and I said, 'I had never seen this,' and then I got more hooked on films which were more realistic, and I got hooked on to the behavior, the way people behave. And I used to think, oh, they must be having some ecstatic experience, where they are in a new situation, that they cannot have in normal life, they're experiencing something else, and that really fascinated me.'

Khan knew enough, however, to know that he shouldn't just jump right into it. 'I wanted to learn. That's why I never went straight from my city to Bombay to become an actor, I was looking for a school which can teach me acting, and luckily we have one very good drama school, a very reputable drama school, it's called the National School of Drama. And I was too eager to get into that, I thought, 'If I don't get admission into this drama school, I'll go mad.''luckily on my first attempt I got the admission. In that school I came to know about Scorsese, about De Niro, all these actors, you know, Pacino, Brando, and my life changed after that.' He laughs at his own mention of De Niro: 'I made my son's name Babil because it resembles Bobby.'

Khan is upbeat about his future career. 'Well, I think I need some more films,' he jokes. 'I wish I could get more films like that, and keep on making notice of myself, until everybody knows me. That's how I wish.' But he's also aware of the weight A Mighty Heart in particular carries. 'Sometimes, as an actor, you know, you want to do more and more films, you want to get noticed. But this film is a very complicated thing. You're always aware in your subconscious that this film is standing on a person's tragedy. It's a mixed kind of thing. You're much more responsible.'