Middle class Gargi girl's swinging to Cannes applause!

You can take the girl out of Delhi, but you can't take Delhi out of the girl. Huma Qureshi, who makes her Bollywood debut with Anurag Kashyap's 'Gangs Of Wasseypur', may have moved to Mumbai three years back to become an actress, but her mannerisms are as Delhi as they can get.
Dressed in a floral maxi dress with kolhapuri chappals ("I can wear them with a gown") and sipping coffee from a rather huge mug, Huma tells us about her transition from an 'enthu cutlet' in Delhi theatre to an Anurag Kashyap heroine.
I come from a very theatrical family
I come from a very large family and all of us are very theatrical people, we are as loud and gregarious as Dilliwaalas can get. Some of my acting comes from there as well. Throughout school and college, I was always drawn towards the performing arts. I didn't know what I wanted to do in life, but I knew ki iss cheez mein mazaa aata hai. Once I started college, I started doing theatre more professionally and more seriously. Not just acting, I was doing a lot of other things. I would be the first one to arrive, doing jhaadu pochha, lights, whatever. That's how the interest started, and I even wrote and directed plays. I have been one of those active enthu cutlets, like they say in Delhi, always very eager to work.
My dad threw a fit when I said I wanted to be an actress
I never really thought I'd get into professional acting in terms of commercial Bollywood mainstream stuff, because I was really fat. I always had those body image issues. I've even burnt some old pictures, that's how fat I was. And one of the things to be an actress is to look nice. Also because of the kind of family I come from – we're a business class family, my father runs a chain of Mughlai food restaurants and there was no precedent in the family in this profession. And I'm a girl; girls in my family don't do movies. I was also, fortunately or unfortunately, very good in studies. My mum always wanted me to be a doctor. I did science till class XI, then I quit in the middle, and studied literature and history. When college happened, I started realising that the one thing that I really enjoyed was acting. And despite the fact that I was really, really fat, a lot of people started telling me, 'Why don't you do this, why don’t you audition here?' And I was wondering why they were telling me all this. I'm this fat girl, trying to hide all my lards of fat in these massive kurtas, and my salwaars and kolhapuris, but that set me thinking. So that's when I had this maha conversation with my parents that this is what I want to do. My dad threw a fit. He was like, 'You're nuts. You've lost the plot. Tumhara dimaag kharaab ho gaya hai. Take it easy. Go abroad, study, do something worthwhile.'
My mum was like, 'get married'. Finally, my dad told me to go and give it a shot. He said, 'We'll support you for a year, if it doesn't work out, we want you to come back and pick up your studies once again'. Fortunately, things worked out. It took me six-eight months to get into the groove of Mumbai, but the first commercial I did was with Abhishek Bachchan, which was a really big deal. And once that started playing, and my parents saw it, they were just so happy.
All my cousins and mamus and khaalas and chachus and taayas and neighbours and acquaintances, they started calling. (Phew! She stops for breath!)
After dark
But obviously, they're very supportive now. When Cannes happened, my mum said, 'Can I also come’? I'd have loved to take her, but then even I didn't know if I was going to go. But inshallah, I'd love to take them one day. We're simple middle class people yaar, we watch all this stuff on TV. For them it's a really big deal that their child is going to these places and is being talked about and being recognised. We're as regular as you can get. I have had the most conservative upbringing you can ever think of. I wasn't allowed to go out after dark. Every 15 minutes my phone would ring. Now also, my mother calls me twice a day. I've had a really protected life. My entire life was in a 10 kilometre radius of my house. And I have also been a very good bachcha that way. I would do the biggest pranks and blame them on my brother (Saqib, the lead actor of 'Mujhse Fraaandship Karogi'). Now also, we live together in Mumbai and it's 'Mahabharata' all the time. My brother's a Yash Raj hero and I'm an Anurag Kashyap heroine living under the same roof.
Anurag keeps all his actors on their toes
Anurag and I made my character in 'Gangs Of Wasseypur' brick by brick. It was the only character that wasn't written. People assume ki Anurag Kashyap hai toh badi workshops karayi hongi, bada character pe kaam-shaam kiya hoga. Kuch nahi hua tha! Mujhe bhi galatfehmi ho gayi thi. I was so gung ho before we began shooting ki I am toh going to kill it in this movie. I was ready with my pen and paper to make notes. And then I was the only actor who was told not to read the script. I was like, arey, yeh kya hota hai. Don’t read the script? Toh maine chori kari – I took a copy and read it. I read the script, and I was like, ismein toh mere karne ke liye kuch hai hi nahi! Then I had a chat with Anurag, and I said, 'I've taken permission from my dad and I'm such a huge fan and I'd love to work with you. But if you think there's nothing for me to do here, please cast me in some other film'. He told me to shut up and trust him. I was like, 'OK sir', but wouldn't you have a thousand and one apprehensions if you'd spoken to your dad and done all this drama about haan main kuch ban ke dikhaoongi.
So then what happened with the character is that most of it is improvisation. That is how he wanted it to be. Anurag is also not a very verbose director, he'll just come and mumble something and you'll be like, what, and he'll say action! Then you do whatever you can understand. This is how he works, once you see the end result you understand the process. Initially it's so baffling, you're like, 'Yeh kar kya raha hai, does he even know what he's doing?' As a director he really keeps you on your toes. Abhi toh main bahut mazak mein bata rahi hoon, but then your heart is pounding because you're so scared. It was my first film, it was a cast of 300 plus people and it does overwhelm you.
(At this point, she got a call on her cell, but didn't take it and said in the way of explanation, "Yeh woh ek ghante ki doston se gap wali call hai." We weren't surprised.)

I hate being slotted into stereotypes. I constantly get asked, 'So, what kind of films do you want to do? Anurag Kashyap and Vishal Bharadwaj – is that the way your career's going to go?' And I'm like, I don't know. I didn't come with a plan. I am very fortunate that these people have chosen to employ me. I am not the one making the choices here. Let's be very clear. They think I fit the part and I'll do justice to it. I believe in commercial cinema but I also believe in doing films with a soul. If I had to do like a really big multi-starrer, yeah, I'd do it for the money. I want a big car and house and everything – middle class na – but there is a certain kind of cinema that I enjoy doing and watching. I just gravitate towards it like any other young person. Hasn't cinema changed? There's a film like 'Kahaani', a 'Paan Singh Tomar'. Who would have thought with that cast, that setting, no glamour, no song, these films would do so well. The audiences are becoming so much more discerning. It's a very interesting trend and I'm fortunate that this is the time I'm in Mumbai and I am working with such filmmakers. Anurag is like the torchbearer of this new wave, in a sense, he's like the poster boy of all this new age stuff that is happening and what he has done is very interesting. He's made offbeat the new kind of mainstream.
I am too young and too new in this profession, I am like the small fish. I am also figuring my way out and I am also stumbling. I'll probably make a lot of mistakes and I'll learn from them and become wiser. But I don't want to live in fear. Being an actor is not very different from manual labour. Each day you decide what you're going to do. I guess after a certain level things are a little in your control, but right now, if a filmmaker calls me for a film, I'll say thank you very much and I'll do my best to do justice for the part. As far as stereotyping is concerned, the kind of person I am, I can do both. I like both. I watch both. I can pull off both. I can do the melodramatic and I can also understand the subtleties of human emotions and I can portray that as well. Thankfully, my parents decided to give some education. It helps in acting. I think you have to be a little educated to be a good actor. I think all good actors are examples of that. Be it this country or Hollywood. Actors are inherently dynamic people, they're always hungry for more. I think that's the demarcation between actors and normal people. Oh, I hate that phrase. It makes me feel like I'm in a zoo. A lot of people say that, actors and normal people, and now I said the same thing. No!
Item songs are so much fun
After 'Gangs Of Wasseypur', I have 'Luv Shuv Tey Chicken Khurana', which is a romantic comedy, a very light, breezy film. It's about family, relationships, food. It's like the perfect casting. I was like, 'Do you even have to think about it? I come from the biggest food family in the world'. The director, Sameer Sharma, he was the assistant in 'DDLJ'. It's that kind of breezy. Then there's 'Ek Thi Daayan', with Emraan. So you see, different worlds meet and collide. It's interesting. Then there's a Nikhil Advani film. It's an action film. When I heard, action, I said 'Bilkul. Ek moti ladki se action karwa rahe ho yaar, that’s the ultimate way to fight the fat in your head’.
Then I've already shot for an item song in Michael Winterbottom's 'Trishna'. I am not averse to item numbers as long as it's done rightly and if I trust the people doing it. This song is called 'Maintenance'. It is so much fun shooting item numbers, it's hard work with all those dancing classes and the dieting, but it's just so much fun!
I wish I could pay someone to exercise for me
I am still in the process of losing weight. I think women are always in the process of losing weight. I was practical about losing weight through a healthy diet and workout. Even today it's a struggle, I am not one of those blessed people who can eat whatever and not gain weight. I am still doing my boiled vegetables and chicken thing, while my mother makes this wonderful food whenever I am in Delhi. I really think it's tragic. I wish there was like a thing where I could pay someone to exercise for me and I could just eat. I am in a profession where there is a lot of pressure to look like something immediately, like get a butt like that immediately or get a body like that immediately. Being an actress is fun and glamorous, and you wear lovely clothes and get photographed and people write insane love letters to you online, so many proposals, really embarrassing stuff, but oh my God, it's so much of hard work. But I am totally enjoying it. This is why people choose to be actors. All actors are attention seekers, they love the attention. What happens after a point is that it becomes exhausting, I guess.