Pratik Gandhi

I come from a teaching family so, we never had anything to do with the financial world.

What changed after 'Scam' on a bigger level was the way the audience and the makers started looking at me as an actor.

Initially, when 'Scam' was released and it instantly became huge, I did feel the pressure. Everyone kept telling me that my next move will decide my career, that I had to choose wisely and be double sure of what I do next. But when I thought about it, I realised there's no formula to this.

The job of an actor is to bring the story to the audience via screen.

Your core competency and acting skills are important.

Sanjeev Kumar is one actor whose performances have inspired me. The way he looked and the way he performed are two different things. That gives me a lot of confidence that look and all do not always matter.

I have grown as an actor in all these years by doing multiple projects.

I first faced the camera without even knowing there was a camera. I was in class 6 in Surat. It was a 'nritya-natika' covered by DD National and aired on DD Gujarati.

I don't succumb to the pressure of expectations. I try to convert it into excitement.

Despite being such a brilliant director, Hansal Mehta is a simple and down to earth man. He is very sorted and driven by passion. So that's a rare combination - being a good craftsman and a good human being.

Playing a real-life character is very intriguing.

When someone is constantly praising you, beyond a point, you don't know what to say beyond a 'thank you.'

I had heard a lot of key words about Harshad Mehta in books, documentaries, on the Internet, and in the script like his passion, greed, a bit of ego, and confidence.

When I was trying to balance my corporate career and theatre, my dad asked me to quit my job and concentrate on my acting career. But I was hesitant because I was equally passionate about both.

I was grounded in the performing arts from a very young age.

Surat is an interesting place.

When we were making 'Scam 92,' we knew that it was something unique.

Theatre has given me lot of opportunities such as directing monologues in 'Saat Teri Ekvees.'

I am learning a lot as a theatre artiste as it gives lots of opportunities to hone my skills as an actor.

It is always good to have dreams, chase them, and work hard. But you should know when the dream is sucking you in and you become such a slave of your dream that you can't see what is right and wrong and that is disastrous.

I had to turn down films and plays because I had a job, and I could not take up better job offers that required me to relocate, because I did not want to lose the link with theatre. It was a huge decision for me to quit my job.

Once something gets noticed and people love you, most of the makers want to put you in the same bracket, feeling this is what the audience would want from an actor. But as an artist, I don't want to be in that space.

Right and wrong are both very subjective, it's all grey.

Everybody is interested in success, but nobody cares about the process behind it.

Gujarati movies and theatre will never take a backseat for me. In fact, I want to do Marathi films too.

When it comes to beliefs, it is a very tricky situation, because it can be anything and still you don't want to hurt anyone's beliefs.

What can't change is the zeal and passion I have for work.

Ultimately, at the end of the day, we are humans and I am here in the entertainment industry for experiments, to create new characters and to tell stories, that's it. I don't think much about success. It will keep changing with every project.

Where I come from, the family, upbringing, whatever I have seen in life, I know for sure that nothing is permanent.

I feel really lucky to have 'Scam 1992' as my first national release, in fact it became international because of the OTT.

It was tough to not be judgmental of a person like Harshad Mehta. But that's where the training of an actor comes into play. My job is to create that character and present him to the audience. If even one per cent of judgment creeps in, then the whole performance will be affected.

Everytime I read a script now, I am able to imagine my character in multiple ways, which I present to the director or the writer, and we take it on from there.

I owe my entire to theatre. Simply because, I got so many chances to practice. Playing the same character for days, I could understand and practice on how to build that emotional arc.

Pre 'Scam' era, I could go out with my daughter in the evening and just go out for a walk, or do things like buying vegetables or other things for the home. But now, in the post 'Scam' era, if I have to do something like that, I have to think about it many times now.

As an engineer and a student of science too I believe that energy can neither be created nor destroyed. If that is the case, then energy is universal.

What is right and what is wrong keeps changing according to time.

There is so much diversity in India in terms of religion, schools of thought, everything.

It's very easy to colour the thoughts of people in the age of social media. If you are being bombarded with some lies constantly, you tend to believe it's true.

Buying a house in Mumbai is a big deal. Even after a decade of being in Mumbai, there was a time when we didn't have a house, suddenly the whole family was homeless.

There were some medical emergencies at home, be it my wife's brain tumour operation, my father's cancer. Eventually we lost him in 2018.

I'm the kind of person, the moment I see issues, I tend to think about the solutions. And that's how my mind is trained.

I don't take the pressure that your next thing has to be bigger than the previous one.

There can't be competition between actors.

Many of my friends and colleagues have told me to take up film direction.

Budget makes a huge difference in the treatment of any movie. When the budget is lavish, it helps the creative team to visualise a story on a broader canvas.

For an actor, nothing can be more blissful than a packed date diary!

I want to be in a space where, if I appear on the stage or the screen, the audience should not know what I'm going to do.

God didn't design an elevator for me. It's great because I'm climbing stairs and learning with every step.

Financial trouble, financial crisis, medical trouble, I've seen it all. But I never experienced a moment of breakdown or self-doubt, somehow.