Ajay Devgn recalls the only time in his career when he wanted to quit films: ‘I reached a point where I wanted to stop’

Asked if the hunger has ever faded, he said, “It has. Honestly speaking, there was a point in my life in the 90s… Today we do one film at a time, at that time we used to do 14-15 films at a time. We used to do four shifts, and five to six hour shifts. We used to go at 7 in the morning for work, shoot till about 12 on one set, and in the same pair of jeans go to the other set. We just used to change the jacket or the shirt and shoot four-five hours.”

Asked if he remembered which character he was playing, Ajay laughed, “No, so many times we forgot. And if you see those films, most of us actors would have the same pair of shoes and jeans in every film, because we were too lazy to change them. So that went on. You’re working from 7 in the morning to 3-4 the next morning, and so many times, it was just from one studio to the other. Go there, crash for two hours, and start working again. I just reached a point where I wanted to stop. I wasn’t enjoying my work.”

Ajay recalled that at the time, the guild enforced a rule because the actors were doing too many films. So, it was decided that no actor would have more than 12 films at a time concurrently on the floors. “That was the point where I felt that I don’t want to work anymore, and I stopped doing this. I started doing two or three films in a year. That was the only phase. Otherwise, I love going to work. If I have nothing to do for two days, I wouldn’t know what to do with myself,” he said.

Ajay’s last film was the action-thriller Bholaa, which he also directed. The film received mixed reviews, and grossed more than Rs 100 crore at the global box office.