Chandan Roy Sanyal on his journey from Kaminey to Prague

Post Vishal Bharadwaj’s Kaminey,actor Chandan Roy Sanyal faced a bit of a lull in his acting career. However,he is super excited about his upcoming film Prague,in which he will be seen playing the role of a schizophrenic architect.

On being asked how he got into the skin of the character,he said: “I was told by my director Ashish Shukla to watch The Machinist with Christian Bale. I had to crop my hair and lose weight to look like a college student and lose sleep to be insomniac,since architects go without sleep for days and nights.”

Chandan will be romancing the beautiful Elena Kazan in Prague. The actor said it was “wonderful” working with Agent Vinod actress. “Since it was her first film and she was more receptive and accommodating and sincere about the role and scenes,so there was a lot of good exchange for the couple to have emoted well since a love story falls flat if the chemistry of the lead pair does not work at all.”

The duo have also shared a passionate kiss in a steamy scene from the movie but Chandan says it wasn’t a good experience.

“Yes,we did a kissing scene but it was difficult since we Indians are not conditioned to be so open and kissing on the drop of a hat in front of the whole crew and doing it over various takes to get it right. It was not a good experience,” he says candidly.

Chandan also opened up about his struggle in bagging a substantial role after Kaminey,apart from small appearances in Tell Me O Kkhuda (2011) and F.A.L.T.U (2011).

“I agree it was completely a different struggle there on after Kaminey,it had catapulted me to a big space with nothing to fall back on,whatever came my way I only chose to do F.A.L.T.U and Tell Me O Kkhuda and rest of the offers were not juicy or the scripts or role were not good,and as an actor one has a responsibility towards the audience and also nobody took a chance with me for a lead role by big banners and everybody just expected I will do lead roles but it was all dry patch since everybody thought but nobody offered. So I chose to do films like Love you to death (2012) and Prague. However,the actor seems content with Prague especially since the film managed to get a worldwide release so as he puts it,“tried and struggled and fought.”

The actor,who was also seen in Rang De Basanti,took some time out from Bollywood and dabbled a bit in Bengali cinema,which seemed to work to his advantage.

“I did few Bengali films,three in total with National Award winning directors like Suman Mukhopadhyay,Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury and Anjan Dutt. It made me a famous regional star and I thought they took care of me more than here with roles. So I went ahead and did Bengali films than doing bad films here.”

Chandan was also fortunate to have landed himself the role of Rishi Kapoor’s nephew in Nikhil Advani’s crime thriller D-Day.

“Going by the reviews its becoming a cult film and my role of Bhanja with Rishi Kapoor is being compared to Mikhail in Kaminey…lets see what happens next. I am thankful to Nikhil Advani for this opportunity. He came to me with a role like that when I was unhappy and sad with the state of affairs of my career. I put in a lot of energy here and I am happy Advani is proud and happy like my previous mentor director Vishal Bharadwaj.”

The actor is now on a roll with two films lined up – Abbas Tyrewala’s rom-com,Mango and Subhash Ghai’s Kaanchi.

“It’s a great opportunity to be working with the part team of Maqbool and producer of Bandit Queen,” he says talking about Mango. Abbas Tyrewala who made a magic like Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na … I can’t reveal much but just that its a romance for me.”

Kaanchi on the other hand is a romantic drama,”I play a corrupt cop Ratan Lal Bagula in love with the lead girl Kaanchi in the film. It’s a comic lover’s role with grey shades.”

The actor says he has no plans of working on the small screen anytime in the coming future. “I think it’s tremendous where actors like me can bask in the glory of doing Hindi films. I am a hero in my head but do not look like one and I hope the big studios will rope me in a responsible role of a Hindi film protagonist and I can get my chance to do the magic like most of the other actors. I think with D-Day,Mango and Kaanchi it will change…inshallah.”