Actor Ishaan Khatter has carved out a niche in acting and is certain that he will surely create his own empire in the acting world. But more than acting, Ishaan is proud of the way he was brought up by his mother and the values he learned from her. In a first, the actor spoke to The Pioneer’s Shikha Duggal about his life, budding days, and more.
When we speak of actor Ishaan Khatter, a lot of people are intrigued to know what is happening in his life. Because he just loves laughing, talking, and having a good time. There is also something else about him that makes him a performer, and that quite surely is the charisma that follows and his commitment to Indian cinema. Whatever little we know of him, we can vouch that the proliferating brother of Shahid Kapoor is not that lazy guy in this self-starter business.
“I have a cultural background in the arts. My mother is a professionally-trained kathak dancer. I grew up in the world of rhythm and music. It was actually she who introduced me to the films at a very young age! I remember she made me watch all the “golden age” movies from the 70s and 80s. She herself was a huge Rajesh Khanna fan! It was then that the “keeda” of acting started to pop. But my mother never hoaxed me into becoming an actor. She gave me a very liberal upbringing. Now I have become academic about acting. Initially, when I had just begun, it was my internal desire to do some theatre or at least intern with Naseeruddin Shah, but due to various reasons, that couldn’t happen. And there is something I would like to disclose: ‘Even before Beyond the Clouds happened to me, some directors had already offered me films as the younger brother of Shahid Kapoor, but I dropped all those offers because I was busy preparing’,” he said.
In the interview, the actor touched on some of the philosophical notes on how he thinks, such as how the sense of self is more important to him than any agenda happening outside in the public. He is constantly at risk of overworking, sometimes just to impress himself! He has a reason for it — he doesn’t want to be mediocre. He wants to keep growing because he doesn’t want his five seconds of fame to fade away from the industry. He confided in us that he never entered the entertainment industry just to become popular! Ishaan continued, “I am still very young in my career. I am not expecting every movie to come to me. Right after Dhadak happened, I was feeling very awkward taking narrations because subconsciously, what was going on in my mind was, ‘Who am I to say no to the director?’ Gradually, with time, I have understood that I can choose my work and not be apologetic about it. I’m a little bit shy about asking for work from directors, but I still asked some of them, and they were very forthcoming (he laughed).”
Ishaan doesn’t listen to everybody in the house who is from the same fraternity — because he feels if he’s doing this, the sense of clarity goes away. In a personal context, we learned, “I wasn’t only brought up with a single mother; I had an elder brother to look after me, who everybody knows as Shahid Kapoor, and he was doing really well for himself when I was just 10 years old. And I have no regrets about the way I was brought up by these two beautiful human beings in my life. A lot of people think that they know my story, but they don’t know an ounce of it. I have great respect for women, looking at how my mom conquered it all. The kind of upbringing she has given me has made me so strong in life that I don’t get intimidated by it anymore. I don’t like to publicly narrate my sob story, and I hate the word struggle attached to my interviews. I prefer “hustle”!” shared the Dhadak actor.
Ishaan is not a huge believer in superstition or zodiac signs, but his mother strongly believes in those. So, Ishaan is definitely intense and brooding. Nowadays he is working more on expressing himself apart from the goofiness that he shows: “I know how to express, but I am not able to express deeply. I am more of a listener, actually. I am even happy to laugh at myself. I have no embarrassment at all. And each to its own, expressing myself on social media will be a really wrong representation of who I am.”
