My major vice? I love myself!

An intense actor, you can’t forget his performances in films like Ghayal — his debut. He was Sunny Deol’s friend and accomplice Rajan, or the ambiguous jawan, Mathura Das in the award winning Border. Having done around a dozen films, he made people sit up with his role in Kashish, his first television assignment for Doordarshan. These days he is the smart cop of Adhikari Bros’ thriller Suraag on DD1, which is doing extremely well — if you count the number of ads it gets. Another serial is Jaan (Zee) in which he plays a double role of a poet and criminal. It recently wrapped up having completed 60-odd episodes but not quite ended. Berry seems least concerned or interested:“Who ever calls me I shoot for them, I don’t knock on doors. Whether it is Jaan, Paan, Khandaan, I’m not bothered. Everything is the same,” he reveals with a certain amount of irritation.

But he is enjoying his character of Inspector Bharat in Suraag though he insists that he enjoys every role he essais. “Suraag is a black hole,” he say, “we all are in that hole and are enjoying being in it. I don’t take the pain of going under the skin of the character but I love going under a blanket and going to sleep,” he laughs and explains that acting is bullshit. When it comes to performing he has his own law which he calls Sudesh Berry’s law of acting which goes something like this – “Acting is floating in a hemisphere without any gravitational force.” And he wants to tell this to all his fellow actors in the world. We told you he is quite humorous and a jolly good fellow.

Inspite of some good films what does he think went wrong in his film career? “Nothing,” he answers quite nonchalantly and continues, “If in my destiny it’s written that I can eat only one chappati, how can I have four? And if Shah Rukh’s destiny has four chappatis how can he eat only two? It’s all destiny. And to make it if you need to be good in flattering, back-stabbing, manipulation, then I’m sorry I’m bad at all this. Or if it’s luck, then I’m just not lucky”.

According to Berry, where anything works in this industry nothing at all might work. He looks at his film career in quite a positive manner; he suddenly straightens up, looks right into our eyes to ask how many flops did Amitabh Bachchan have before Zanjeer? And without waiting for an answer, replies, “Fourteen! So, I’m also waiting for another two as I’ve had around 12 so far!” Two of his films will soon be released: Shankar Shamboo and Woh Bewafa Thi. “Both are sure-shot flops, but I know they will not affect my career. An actor remains an actor, only a star flops. You must have seen stars fall but ever seen the sun fall? I’m the Sun!!”. Ha,ha.

Suddenly Berry wants to know why are we discussing only acting? Acting is not a topic to be discussed. “Can’t we discuss whether you had bhindi or cabbage last night?” he smiles. This is when we discover he is not only humorous but pretty weird too.

So for some interesting news. No, he is not getting married or anything — he refuses to talk about it. No, he is turning producer with a serial which he hasn’t named, but is about a man who brings about a revolution. He plays a godfather, a shahenshah, a Messiah in it, which he finds quite exciting. His production company is called 20th July Television. Weird isn’t it? Anyway, on the film front he is looking forward to J.P.Dutta’s Refugee in which he is the central villain. “I’m playing the negative lead for the first time and it’s quite a role. It’s brilliant,” he thinks. As for television he is contented with just Suraag as he feels television is time-consuming. “And I don’t have so much time to give to television,” he concludes.