On the eve of his directorial debut, actor Pankaj Kapur is meticulously courteous. He agrees to an interview without ado, doesn’t give you the round around and politely requests punctuality as he is on a very tight clock.

At his office in a middle-class residential locality in Mumbai, Kapur sips some green tea behind his desk and is game for all questions as long as they are not “offensive”. A poster of Mausam, which he scripted for his son Shahid Kapur, takes up a wall.

“Frankly, the desire to direct a film was there for a long time. I have directed on stage and thought I should direct on television before taking on a film, but my major time was consumed by acting. Even then I found time to write film scripts,” says Kapur, 57.

Mausam came to be when eldest son Shahid approached him in 2006 to make a film. The writing of it took so much time, mainly because he wanted to satisfy himself “as a creative person”. His commitment to his craft, in his book, means no short cuts, no safety measures. “Whatever I am doing, the effort is of the utmost,” he says.

Kapur put everything on hold for this film. “I don’t want to boast about it but I can’t count the number of offers I have refused. But I confess I did not realise it would take so much time,” says Kapur who worked secretively on the script. “I am extremely private. Only during the final draft did I share some good scenes with my wife and daughter,” he says. And when he gave the complete script to Shahid, he loved it.

Could Shahid have said no to a father who had put in so much effort into a fresh script and with whom he clearly wanted to spend time, as he has told several television channels? Kapur demurs, “You don’t have to say yes. As a professional actor you have to choose a script that you want to do. Shahid’s decision to do it was not an emotional one but a professional one.”

Would he have made the film with someone else if his son had said no? Yes, Kapur says firmly, “About 25 years ago, I wrote a film with a particular actor in mind. That person is no more but it will still be made. But I am glad that Shahid had no reason to say no — this film was made for him.”

Shahid is Kapur’s son from a previous marriage to actress Neelima Azim. They divorced when Shahid was very young. Kapur has two other children with actress Supriya Pathak, to whom he has been married for 23 years.

While the father was not surprised when his son entered films, he was surprised when Shahid told him, “I am being signed as a hero and I want you to come with me.” Pankaj’s response: “I want you to take this decision on your own.” In so doing, he was extending the advice his own father gave him. “Shahid has earned his spurs independently. I am very proud and happy for him,” Kapur smiles.

Pankaj Kapur grew up in small-town Ludhiana, on an organic diet of Hindi commercial films, watching the “great actors like Dilip saab and Dev Anand, and great directors like Guru Dutt, Bimal Roy and Vijay Anand.” They were his inspiration to be an actor. Kapur’s father, the late Anand Prakash Kapur, was a professor of English and a college principal. “It was he who found out for me about the NSD (National School of Drama) in Delhi,” Kapur recalls. That’s how “a 5ft 2in, freckled little faced” lad from Ludhiana arrived in the capital and walked away with the gold medal in acting in his graduation year, four years later.

It was his mother, Kumud, who was his first teacher in acting. “She steered me towards acting, elocution, literature and Shakespeare. My parents were silent tutors — before I realised I had imbibed a lot from them,” he says, his face suffused with emotion.

“It was sheer desire and passion,” he holds up a clenched fist, that drove him towards a life in acting. He didn’t fit the conventional physical mould of a lead actor (though he did gain 2 inches in height with yoga and exercise), but he adapted to the NSD in no time and discovered a “great set of teachers like Sheela Bhatia, Nemichand Jain and Rita Kothari, headed by the genius (Ebrahim) Alkazi, who I am indebted to.”

Following his graduation at the top of his class, he joined the NSD Repertory since not “much work of standard was to be found” outside. Kapur was signed on for Richard Attenborough’s film Gandhi (where he played Pyarelal, second secretary to the Mahatma) which got him thrown out of the NSD. “Halfway through the film the Repertory said you can’t act in it anymore.”

It was then that Kapur began to look in earnest for work in cinema. “I was very shy but I had trained myself and some directors had heard about me. A tiny section had even seen my work.”

Kapur worked in theatre. “But no one comes forward till you hit a certain level of popularity,” he rues. That breakthrough happened with the now fabled Karamchand, where he played the eponymous detective whose character he memorably gifted with a carrot-chomping habit. The role skyrocketed him into a household name, well beyond what films like Aarohan, Ek Ruka Hua Faisla and the classic satire Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron could deliver.

The industry finally noted an actor with presence and producers sought him out mainly in television. The film world was less obliging. So it came to pass that a 29-year-old Kapur played father to Amrita Singh (barely a few years younger) in the comedy Chameli ki Shaadi “but it was Basu da (Chatterjee) directing it, so that was reward enough.”

Slowly, directors began to trust him with major parts. But even so, there were stretches of time without any work or money. “I will be honest, that happens even today. Money has always been a concern. Mainly because I was choosy.”

He reflects on his material assets. “I am extremely fortunate to have a house in Bombay and a couple of cars. But I am not affluent and lead a good middle-class life. I was middle-class in Ludhiana and I am middle-class in Bombay. From the Ludhiana point of view I have made it. From Bombay’s, I am faring extremely well.”

In recent times, Kapur lingers in the popular cinemagoer’s memory for his performance in the acclaimed Maqbool, an adaptation of Macbeth, set against the backdrop of Mumbai’s underworld.

The role of the menacing Abbaji (King Duncan of Scotland) came his way when Kapur’s name was suggested by actor Naseeruddin Shah (whose wife Ratna Pathak is the sister of Supriya, Kapur’s wife). Kapur turned in a performance that would win him his second National Award for Best Supporting Actor. He had won the same award for Raakh (1989) and a Special Jury award for Best Actor in Ek Doctor ki Maut.

Ironically, television has always provided the runway to Kapur’s cinematic soaring. While Karamchand became a classic, another landmark TV outing was on one of its earliest countdown shows. With Satish Kaushik, Kapur made the Philips Top Ten (on Bollywood chartbusters) a hilarious partnership that viewers tuned in to watch rather more than the songs.

Ordinarily, the actor in him would not have touched a countdown show but Kapur was neckdeep in debt after his TV series Mohandas BA LLB, which he wrote, produced and acted in, flopped.

Kapur may be selective about his roles but he has his mantra on what it takes to be a professional. “It is the right of an actor to demand a script, his right to say he will work for 20 hours, not 24, his right to be paid his salary on time. To apply professional ethics towards work is not to throw attitude, it is what I call normal,” he says animatedly.

Kapur admits it is a bit mystifying that work finds its way to him even though he is so reticent. “Some power is supporting me for I am not a very social person.”

Having married twice, and chosen a romantic theme for his debut film, what is his take on romance? “What has being married twice got to do with romance,” he retorts instantly. Having got the marriage- romance hyphenation out of the way, he goes on to describe himself as a romantic at heart. “It comes naturally to me, I like the feeling of love and of being wanted. That’s how Mausam goes too. Love has various shades, it cannot be defined, just felt. But as a filmmaker you have to verbalise it.” Incidentally, the tagline of the film is “Beyond romance”.

Kapur refuses to be drawn on his divorce with Shahid’s mother. “I don’t like talking about what happened 30 years ago,” he replies firmly. About Supriya, his wife of 23 years, he says, “I knew intuitively when we met that I wanted to lead the rest of my life with her. She was a very beautiful girl but I loved the warmth she exuded,” he says gruffly.

They have two children Sanah and Ruhaan, who are in queue to be directed by their dad. “Why not, they all are in line!” Kapur twinkles. They will have to wait though. “It’s time for some acting now,” he says hungrily.