An actor will be known only via his acting, not his 'looks' - Casting Director Gaurav Kaushal

Gaurav Kaushal, a simple family oriented guy from Delhi came to the ‘Dream City’ of Mumbai with aspirations of making it big as a Director. The man who also had knowledge of acting in theatres began his career as an Assistant Director and has been a part of nearly 20-25 films. He later worked as Casting Associate with various production houses like Balaji Telefilms, Swastik Productions and is presently with Filmfarm India. The man who has clear-set goals in life, talks about his journey in the industry, and his future aspirations for the ‘Behind the Lens’ section. Take us through your journey... I am a simple person and belong to a middle class family. I love my family a lot, and am what I am today because of their support. I started my career as an Assistant Director and then moved on to work as the Casting Associate. Presently, I hold the position of Casting Director with Filmfarm India. I was involved in the casting of shows like Phulwa and Navya for Swastik Productions and for Savitri in the initial phase when the show was with Filmfarm India. What made you take up Casting as your job profile after being an Assistant Director? Well, the very thought that it is really tough to get a show going without proper casting made me realize the importance of a person involved in Casting. I take this phase as a learning curve wherein I help out actors to bring to the fore the best out of them. If you provide me a scene and a guy who drives a rickshaw, I have the ability in me to train the person within an hour to give his best shot as an actor. Talk us through your theatre background… I was in the medium for just one to two years. Though I did not do any mind-blowing roles, I got to play various small characters through which I gained quite a lot of confidence as an actor. Today, I utilize this ability of mine to train actors for a particular role while casting them. How do you go about your casting job? I believe in the policy that an actor will be known only by his acting and not by his looks. So I will always look for a performer rather than a good looker. It does not matter to me whether the actor is fresh or experienced, talent is of utmost importance. As I said before, I have the ability in me to bring the best out of an actor. Have you ever thought of a career in acting? Not at all. I will never become an actor. I have my eyes set at Direction and I am very clear about it. In today’s scenario, most of the casting directors are actors. So I want to be different from the lot. How is your rapport with actors? I am very honest to the actors I cast. I give them the clear picture of their character and only then select them. Who is your inspiration when it comes to work? I am greatly inspired by Imtiaz Ali’s direction and simply love his works. He has the ability in him to present the normal love stories in a different way. The man’s works are always of high quality. A Director I will love to work with is Sudhir Mishra. Tell us more about your interests… I have a passion for writing and hope to make a career out of it. I have been writing few scripts for the past two years. My aim is to write a movie, something on the lines of Peepli Live wherein prominence is given to the script and not for faces playing the roles. Direction is surely a goal for the future, but I will want to make it as a writer first in both small and big screen. So are you working towards becoming a writer? Yes, initially when I came to Mumbai, I did not have that many contacts. But now that I have settled, I have contacts and have started trying my luck. Your immediate goal would be… I want to see myself as a story writer in movies.