Legend has it that former India captain Mohammed Azharuddin only trained two people. One was his son; the other, Emraan Hashmi. "It was very heartening to hear that," says the actor, who learnt the nuances of the game from the man with the stylish strokes.

Hashmi needed those lessons, for he plays the cricketer in the biopic Azhar, slated to be released next year. The actor, who in 12 years has acted in 38 films, is happy that his only project this year is the film on the much admired skipper who won fame and infamy.

"Azhar as a film is equal to doing to two or three films at a time," Hashmi explains.

For 12 years, he says, he kept promising himself that he would work on only one film a year. "But I get greedy for good work and you can't let go. So all these years I ended up shuttling between one set and another, doing 24-hour-long shifts, not coming back home for many days."

He looks back at the years as we sit in his plush seventh floor flat in Pali Hill, Bandra. It is a functionally furnished room, with no trimmings - quite like Hashmi himself. He is wearing jeans and a grey T-shirt that sits well on his lean frame. He is 36, but looks almost 10 years younger.

Hashmi's candid but never-over-the-top performances have won him a considerable fan following. He made his mark as a lover boy bedding his women and kissing them with a passion that would put a Mills & Boon romance to shame. His character always had grey shades - they were dysfunctional, melancholic and brooding, but paradoxically bold in bed. Soon he was dubbed by the tabloid press as a serial kisser (prompted by a public appearance where he wore a tee with that slogan).

"Look, it is a media-given label," he says, referring to the moniker. "I detach myself from that. They do it because it sells their paper or channel."

What's also true is that Hashmi has won critical acclaim in the last few years - for his roles in films such as Mohit Suri's Awarapan, Dibakar Banerjee's Shanghai and Milan Luthria's Once Upon a Time in Mumbaai. After a hostile decade-long negative press, critics began warming up to him three years ago.

But nothing seems to faze him - neither success nor failure. His films sometime do wonderfully well at the box office, raking in crores of rupees, and at other times, they vanish without a whimper. His last five films went bust - the latest, Hamari Adhuri Kahani, was universally panned - but Hashmi is not troubled by that.

"You put so much hard work into a film and when it does not generate excitement at the box office you feel dejected. But for the kind of person that I am dejection does not last very long, only for that particular weekend of the film's release. Then I move on. I don't feel remorseful, weep or cry," he says.

He is equally unmoved by success, he says. "I don't gloat beyond the weekend of a film's successful response. I move on after Saturday, Sunday. To the next film. Since I am constantly working, it won't bode well if I approach the next film gloating, and with no humility. Or if I am dejected after a flop and go to the next film in that state of mind, my approach to the new film will be tentative."

He warms up. "Well, more than the success, it matters how you deal with failure, because failure is inevitable. You are going to find it somewhere down the line. You should know how to deal with it. You stumble, fall, feel bad but move on..."

This, he explains, is how he's always been. "Even in school, my cousins (the Bhatts, Mohit Suri) would wonder how I could be so calm while the others would be so nervous before the exams. I never had performance anxiety before exams despite cramming at the last minute."

Hashmi never really thought he would become an actor. But he was related to the industry - Mahesh Bhatt's mother and his paternal grandmother were sisters. It was the Bhatts who offered him his first role - in a film called Footpath (2003).

" Footpath did not do well at the box office, but it got me the attention I needed. Murder was my first bona fide hit, Awarapan was path-breaking," he says, and then goes on to name his landmark films - "Jannat, Shanghai, Once upon a time in Mumbaai, The Dirty Picture."

<,>B<,>ut it was Murder - with Mallika Sherawat quivering under his seemingly electric touch - that changed the course of his career. The Bhatts, known for their steamy films combined with a dose of crime and noire, capitalised on this and more such films followed. He kissed and disrobed more women - and the films made money.

Was he comfortable with so much of kissing on screen? "I am always comfortable," he shrugs. How does his wife - Parveen Shahani - take it? "She is ok; fairly accepting of it like any wife would of her husband's career. This is just a profession."

Indeed, in Bollywood, Hashmi is known for his professional ways. Like Amitabh Bachchan, who lives by his watch, Hashmi has a reputation for being a stickler for time.

"From my schooldays, I have kept time as an important factor and that hasn't changed. Very early on, I remember my father telling me, if you want to be successful you should be on time. He was an early riser. I wasn't an early riser before but once I started work, I started getting up early. It is wired into my body clock. In the film industry I guess this is a rarity. I guess everybody has their own work ethic. This is mine."

As a school kid, despite the Bollywood links, Hashmi didn't give cinema much thought. "If I wasn't related to Mahesh Bhatt, I don't think I would have been in the industry. I was not one of those kids who had a die-hard dream of becoming an actor. I was like thinking of becoming a pilot at one stage and then I thought I should go to the US and learn VFX. Acting was an accident."

It was the success of Murder that made him realise that acting could be his bread and butter.

But in recent times, a new Hashmi seems to have emerged. He signs up films which have lots more to offer than his first few ventures did. Secondly, his four-year-old son's illness - Ayaan was diagnosed with cancer in 2014 and is now well - brought about significant changes in his life.

When he is shooting, the film production unit is aware that he does not like to spend extra hours waiting for a shot. So while he is particular about coming on time, he is also fussy about leaving on time. This habit evolved after he realised he was not giving enough time to his family.

<,>H<,>ashmi has also been doing his own research into cancer, therapy and nutrition. The family focuses on fresh and organic foods, avoiding processed foods.

"Google can be a scary place but you also get everything you need. I realised that doctors never tell you about diets or nutrition because they do not see it as an effective means of curing diseases. But there are so many spices and herbs in India that are wonderful."

A fairly private person, he surprised many some years ago when he lashed out in public against religious discrimination, saying that he couldn't buy a house in a predominantly Hindu community building in Bandra because of his religion.

"In my family we are always speaking our minds on any issue at hand that needs to be addressed. I didn't know that it had happened to other Indian actors. For me, it was all new."

His family, he adds, is liberal and multi-religious. "I am Muslim. My dad's family is Muslim. My mother is Christian. My wife is Hindu. I could not get it that in an affluent society like Bandra people were acting like they were in the dark ages. I had heard about ghettos in India but when you are born in Bandra, they seem distant. That was the first time I realised how prevalent discrimination is. It shocked me, made me angry."

Discrimination, he fears, is everywhere. "I am not saying that Muslims or Christians are not doing this to Hindus. There is a divide. We can't call ourselves secular beyond a point."

Did the communal riots of 1992-1993 in Mumbai affect him in Bandra? As a young teenager, the violence didn't affect him. "But I remember coming back from school and the society was crossing out the name plates as a safety measure. I have no other memory of the riots."

But all that is now behind him. Hashmi eventually found a better, larger and a more inviting house in Pali Hill, devoid of man-made schisms. And he is now ready for a new film, and what promises to be a new journey.

"We begin Azhar's journey... wish us luck," he tweeted a few days ago.