Books: Journey Without Direction

SAEED: AN ACTOR'S JOURNEY
BY Saeed Jaffrey
HARPERCOLLINS
PAGES: 321
PRICE: Rs 395

INTERVIEW: SAEED JAFFREY

Actor Saeed Jaffrey defends his book while speaking to Assistant Editor Ashok Malik.

Your book has received a phenomenally bad press. Some very critical reviews.
Really? I've only seen one. Totally stupid. The reviewer got the wrong end of the stick. It made me terribly depressed ... In England they're singing praises of the book. I'm not trying to be a writer; I'm trying to write my autobiography. I tell my stories the way I tell them in real life, the way I talk or describe things.
Some say the book focuses too much on Saeed the lady-killer?
Not lady-killer. It's the wrong expression. Lady lover, yes.
Perhaps it is the perception that actors are vain.
Vain? I find that the more you achieve, the more modest you become.
Well, actors do have this image of being glamorous people.
That must be only here, because of Bollywood. But over there (in the West) glamour and that sort of thing is shunned. An actor's got a serious duty to perform. God's given him the gift to interpret his creatures. He has to do that honestly and conscientiously. Where does the glamour come in? What about the tough times? When he does not know where his next cup of coffee is coming from.
Why have you given up acting in Hindi films?
Because I'm fed up of playing naughty uncle and rich daddy. Satyajit Ray and Raj Kapoor are no more. Shekhar Kapur has moved on ... People with an imagination who would give me challenging roles. Sai Paranjpye (Chashm-e-Budoor) made me a Dilli ka paanwala. But what I found in Bollywood was that you couldn't survive if you didn't take on the ordinary roles. You couldn't be as selective as you could in England.
Do you see Bollywood films these days?
No I don't.
Why?
What's there to see?

What a terribly disappointing book this is, in every way. To begin with, the author's English is just about passable. It is not just a question of grammar, it is the sheer monotony and pedestrian quality of what he writes. There is no felicity or any kind of identity; every sentence is as impersonal as the other and even the attempts at a lighter tone are laboured.

One would overlook all this if the book were anything other than it is. If, for example, Saeed Jaffrey had not just recounted the numerous roles he has played on stage and on screen but written of the way he approached each character, how he decided to play it, how he let it develop and how it finally emerged, it would have been a fascinating and rewarding read for everyone who has seen Jaffrey act -- and, of course, particularly for the hundreds of young actors dreaming of glory and hoping to refine their skills. There is absolutely none of this; he mentions all the roles he played, but only to expand on how much he drank between rehearsals, or after a film was completed, or who said what to whom.

Jaffrey is an actor and a good actor at that. He may have based his skill on imitation and mimicry, which he refers to from time to time in his book; he certainly gives the impression that that is all it takes to be an actor. This is in spite of his stint with Lee Strasberg's Actors' Studio and his having worked with some of the greatest actors and directors in theatre and in films; he never once talks of what he learnt in his time with Strasberg or, indeed, when he was with other teachers or such fine actors as Ingrid Bergman and Eric Portman.

What one is left with is a jumble of names and pointless events; how he went to some party and what someone said to him there and where he went after that and more of this sort of rambling for large portions of the book. He makes a great deal of the number of women he slept with, not realising that no one is really interested. Not a single one of them comes across as a credible human being, in fact, no one in the book does. Even Pandit Nehru, who features at one point, comes across as a sort of caricature.

Jaffrey's account of his first marriage is breathtaking in its smug assumption that he could sleep with all manner of women but his wife had to be as pure as the driven snow. When his wife confessed to him that while acting in a play in New York a black actor had grabbed her and forcibly kissed her, this little Lothario was beside himself with jealousy -- and promptly went off and slept with some woman or the other!

All through this book, there is a constant self-adulation that makes one squirm. Jaffrey was always the best student in class, in fact, he even cried when he came first and he felt another boy was actually better than him; whenever he acted it was always to standing ovations; all the beautiful girls wanted to go to bed with him; and so it goes on and on.

To repeat what one said at the beginning, this is a terribly disappointing book, often quite ridiculous. The pity is the writer is obviously blissfully oblivious to it all.