‘I love working with new directors’

He’s done more than 400 films but still yearns to act with first-time directors. Anupam Kher says debutant filmmakers keep him alive as an actor. “In the last five years I have launched only new directors, whether it was Dibakar Banerjee, Neeraj Pandey or Ayan Mukerjee. I love working with first-time directors,” says Kher.

“Their passion for work is unbelievable. They know their mind. I get to learn a lot from them and that keeps me alive as an actor,” he asserts. Kher, whose 2002 directorial debut

Om Jai Jagdish

fared poorly at the box office, says he is ready to get back to directing.

“I would love to direct a film. I am ready with two scripts. I am looking for a financier,” he says. The 55-year-old actor says, “This is the best phase of Indian cinema. I am happy to still be working and I will be doing so for the next 25 years and will be exploring different kinds of cinema...it’s a very, very exciting period.”

Kher, who has played a father in umpteen films like

Tezaab

(1988),

Daddy

(1989),

Dil

(1990) and

Dil Hai Ki Manta Nahin

(1991), is donning daddy’s role yet again in debutant director Yogesh Mittal’s

Yeh Faasley

. “The story of this film is fantastic. I have many films on father-daughter relationships, but the aspects of the father-daughter relationship that

Ye Faasley

has touched upon, I have never done before...It’s a very intriguing father-daughter relationship,” he claims. Debutant actor Tena Desae plays his daughter in the film.