By: Mohnish Singh
Bollywood star Abhishek Bachchan, who has played diverse characters in a number of successful films over the past 21 years, has said that he regrets making his acting debut with Refugee (2000) unprepared.
Also marking the silver screen debut of Kareena Kapoor Khan, Refugee hit the marquee in 2000. It was written and directed by JP Dutta, right after the thunderous success of the multi-starrer Border in 1997.
In a new interview, when asked to talk about making mistakes in his career, Bachchan said, “One of the very few regrets that I have is that when I made my debut with Refugee. I felt I was not prepared to work for the great JP Dutta. You get to work with such an honoured director on your first film, you need to be prepared for that challenge and that honour. I felt I was very underprepared as an actor. I should have been a lot more prepared for JP saab. JP saab is family for me. I love him. I should have been better for him.”
He continued, “But that’s also something which has been great learning. Had I not, I would have not learnt the things that I learnt in the 20 years after that. If I had been so prepared at that time, I don’t think I would have ever learnt anything as an actor. It’s not how you start, but how you end. But your start determines a large part of how you are going to end. Because my start was shaky in that aspect for my preparation perspective, it kind of kicked me to pull up my socks, you gonna do better, you need to do better, you need to do better.”
Abhishek Bachchan is presently busy promoting his next film Bob Biswas, a spin-off of Sujoy Ghosh’s Kahaani (2012). The film is scheduled to premiere on December 3, 2021, on ZEE5.
