Salman Khan is a huge star and is doing terrific work: Nawazuddin Siddiqui

It isn’t just Alia Bhatt who’s getting ready to take music lessons. For the role of a classical vocalist in a forthcoming film the method-actor par excellence Nawazuddin Siddiqui would be hiring himself a Hindustani classical vocal maestro to train him. The film entitled The Music Teacher to be directed by Sarthak Dasgupta requires Nawazuddin to be an adept vocalist. While an expert vocalist can sing for Nawaz he would like to look convincing while putting forward the nuances, hence the tutoring. This method actor spent a large part of 2013 digging a mountain for Ketan Metan parabolic take of inspiration and perspiration The Mountain Man, and attending international film festivals. Nawaz says he is very surprised with the way 2013 panned out. “I thought 2012 was too eventful a year for me to repeat. In 2013 I only had two releases. But by God’s grace I got so much praise for both Bombay Talkies and The Lunchbox. It continues even now.” Nawaz has been festival-hopping all over the world. He has just returned from New York after attending New York’s South Asian Film Festival where the Nawaz starrer Monsoon Shootout was the opening film. Nawaz also attended the Dubai Film Festival in November with The Lunchbox. Beams Nawaz proudly, “Now I go back to the US again to the Sundance Film Festival with Geetu Mohandas’s road movie Liars Dice. So it seems the festival journey will continue in 2014. In the last two years there is a not single major international film festival that hasn’t featured my cinema.” Earlier in 2013 Nawazuddin won the Best Supporting Actor award for The Lunchbox at the Asia-Pacific Film Festival. “That’s an award I am really proud of since there were the best film and actors from all over the world,” says Nawaz whose next release is the highly-regarded Ashim Ahluwalia’s Miss Lovely, a look at the dark desperate dingy and dreadful world of C-grade horror films in the 1970s. Says Nawaz, “The kind of cinema that Miss Lovely depicts is what I grew up watching. I came to Mumbai hoping to become a hero in those horror films. I never thought I’d be part of a film that examines the culture of the films that I grew up watching.” Nawaz is also making significant inroads into commercial Hindi cinema. He has been signed in to play a major role in the next Salman Khan blockbuster Kick directed by Sajid Nadiadwala. “I’ve been told not to say anything about my role. But I am looking forward to working with Mr Salman Khan. He is such a huge star and doing terrific work,” says Nawaz.