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| A still from Kahani, one among the films which gave Nawazuddin Siddique, a break |
Staff Correspondent, August 2, 2015, NewsCrunch
Hooked to movies in the tin-roofed small cinema hall at his native Budhana village in UP, and trained at National School for Drama (NSD), actor Nawazuddin Siddique was broke after seven years of doing theatre.
Love for acting and hunger drove him to Mumbai and look for opportunities in television and films.
He found miniscule roles in Sarfarosh, Shool and Munnabhai MMBS.
He also did time as an extra, being part of the crowd in a few advertisements, during which he always turned his face away from the camera.
‘So that nobody could say that an NSD actor is part of a crowd’ Nawazadduin Siddiqui told Indian Express, when asked why he did so.
The remarkable interview of the remarkable actor charts the course he’s traversed through in his profession.
It also paints the picture of the person that he is – someone who is passionate and dedicated to his craft and as mentally tough as Dashrath Manjhi, the mountain man whom he plays in Manjhi.
That Nawazuddin Siddiqui was a down to earth person has been apparent for quite a while.
When a popular twitter handle ‘Gareeb Aadmi’ used his photo on its profile, he said he was not ashamed of being poor because it was true.
The @GareebGuy twitter account run by an unidentified person tweets the experiences of a supposedly poor man, who lives with a family of 16 under a railway bridge. The account has become popular for its sharp though often politically incorrect sense of humour.