Tiger Memon in his den

When you go to interview an actor like Pavan Mallhotra, you don't know what to expect – an actor who's held his own and chosen to do fewer roles in so many years than people do in a year's time! But upon meeting him, Pavan came across as extremely unassuming. Very well turned out in a blue shirt and blue jeans – casual yet classy. We get talking. Excerpts from the interview:

With the kind of actor you are, why don't you get the roles made for you?

This is a very common question I'm asked. I see it as a compliment.

I feel an actor has very less time on hand – there are so many characters to play, so many stories to tell. For example, I've played a villain in four movies. But Salim Langda is totally different from Tiger Memon I played in Black Friday, and so is Irfan in 50 Lakh.

I decided to sit at home when work was being offered to me – it was difficult to do, financially, that but I took a decision.

Do you believe in method acting?

Depends. Sometimes it's instinctive and sometimes it's not. You have to collect your experiences – what you read, what you're told, what you see – and make a collage out of it. And it comes out of your subconscious mind at the right time.

When you lie, you act. When I have to play someone, my speech, pattern, body language is the same throughout for that character. I don't have a style of my own. There are no set rules for as to how one is going to approach what.

When I played Tiger Memon, I was not judging him as an actor. As a normal human being, I might not have agreed with him. But while acting, I played him from all the information I had about him, from the team's research, from the book… The idea is that when people finally see the character, they should go, 'Aisa hi tha woh' – and that's what happened.

I don't decide the note of my character – my director decides it. There's no such thing as 'going beyond the script', I feel. One has to tap the maximum potential within the information available. I don't believe in Alfred Hitchcock when he says that an actor is like a piece of furniture. I've proved that I'm a thinking actor.