After losing myself in the middle, I’m slowly coming back on track: John Abraham

PTI, Apr 1, 2022, 1:26 PM IST

Mumbai: John Abraham is in a 2.0 phase in his career, where the actor says the ”frustration” of doing something conventional has pushed him to go back to his ”real” space and headline different, riskier films.

The first decade of Abraham’s 20-year-long career was a mix of big commercial entertainers, like ”Dhoom” and ”Dostana”, balanced with acclaimed projects like Kabir Khan’s ”Kabul Express” and ”New York”, Deepa Mehta’s ”Water”, Anurag Kashyap’s ”No Smoking” and Milan Luthria’s ”Taxi No 9211” among others.

While the actor delivered dramas like Shoojit Sircar’s ”Madras Cafe” and Nikkhil Advani’s ”Batla House” in the last decade, Abraham had more big scale commercial releases, like the ”Satyameva Jayate” franchise, action drama ”Romeo Akbar Walter” and last year’s ”Mumbai Saga”.

In an interview with PTI, the actor said sensibilities of films like ”Water” and ”No Smoking” reflect the ”real John Abraham”.

”I lost myself somewhere down the line. Aditya Chopra once told me, ‘John, you’re the only actor who has made the most interesting choices that have failed, because they’re way ahead of their time. But that has defined you’.

”I am defined by the choice I have made. From ‘Jism’, ‘Kabul Express’, ‘Water’, ‘No Smoking’, ‘New York’ to ‘Taxi no 9211’, that entire phase. But somewhere down the line, probably I hold myself completely responsible for the choices I made, I lost my way.” The 49-year-old said the reason could be ”partly because of commerce, partly because of commitment”.

”When you commit to a certain film, because a particular kind of film works, you don’t back out of the project. If a film fails, I’m the last actor who will throw the director under the bus. I signed the film, I’m responsible for it as well,” he added.

The actor is gearing for the release of his next, ”Attack”. The action drama, which features him as a ”super soldier”, will be released on April 1.

”Attack” will be followed by Yash Raj Film’s much-awaited ”Pathaan”, Mohit Suri’s ”Ek Villain Returns” and the action-thriller ”Tehran”.

”After losing myself in the middle, I’m slowly coming back on track. I did ‘Batla House’, ‘Madras Cafe’ and that’s why I’m now doing ‘Tehran’. I’m coming back to my space. I’ll still make mistakes, still go wrong, but I believe I’ll make fewer mistakes today than I did in my last phase,” he said.

Abraham said he established his production banner JA Entertainment in the first place because as an actor he wasn’t getting the projects he wanted to do.

Now that he is in a position of power, he no longer wants to play safe.

”Today, I’m going back to that space because I am getting frustrated with the stuff I’ve been doing. I thought, ‘What the hell am I belting out?! This is c*ap!’ If I’ve done five commercial films and one different film in the last ten years, in this phase, barring one commercial film, all of them are going to be different.

”I’ve been told for the other films that they’re a big risk. But higher the risk, greater the profit, in terms of creative satisfaction. I don’t have a problem failing if I’m trying something different. I’ve a problem failing when I do something conventional. Frustration has brought me back into this space,” he added.