Honest critics are rare: Imran Khan (Interview)

Actor Imran Khan feels there may be many people who praise him to his face, but there are few who give him honest reviews. Among the rare ones are his mother, and his wife, Avantika.

"The biggest critics in my life are my mom and my wife Avantika. The truth is that when you become an actor, when you become a celebrity, people will come and tell you 'Bro, you are the best, you have done a good job'. So those people are everywhere," Imran told IANS.

"What is very rare is people who will say these are your weaknesses, this is your problem and this is where you have to work on. People who will honestly do that, those are very rare," he added.

Among Imran's much-awaited projects is "Matru Ki Bijlee Ka Mandola", directed by acclaimed film-maker Vishal Bharadwaj. The actor feels there is a tremendous benefit to work with experienced directors like Bhardwaj, who has given the industry a different genre of cinema with projects like "Omkara", "Ishqiya", "Kaminey" and "7 Khoon Maaf".

"I never realised it before, but now I realise that you get tremendous benefit as an actor. Earlier, I have worked with first-time directors or second-time directors... there is a sense of two of us finding our way together. We used to find the correct way of working.

"Here I am working with someone who has consistently proved himself and he knows what the correct way of working is," said the 29-year-old.

In "Matru Ki...", Imran will be see playing a Haryanvi boy. Having played the modern, boy-next-door roles in the past, he admits that he was apprehensive about this one before he began shooting for it.

"I was skeptical. I had great doubts about whether I will be able to learn the body language correctly. I was very nervous and I spoke to Vishal about it. He said, 'I have immense faith in you'. He said, 'if you can put your best effort, then you can do it'," said Imran, citing how encouraging Bhardwaj was all the time.

"He introduced to me a teacher named N.K. Sharma in Delhi. He has a theater group in Delhi. I spent two to three months in Delhi working with him to understand the dialogues and the body language. Everything had to be learnt from scratch," he added.

Imran is nervous about this film, and says it is quite normal.

"I think that in my experience, any person, who is an honest artist or an honest worker, will always be nervous about whether they have done a good job or not. The greatest people that I know or I respect would say, 'Did I do good enough and can I do better?'"

"Matru..." also features Anushka Sharma, Arya Babbar, Pankaj Kapoor and Shabana Azmi.