Anil Kapoor (second from right) with director Danny Boyle and actors Freida Pinto and Dev Patel at the London Film Festival screening of Slumdog Millionaire

Anil Kapoor laughed loudly and took it as a huge compliment when told his role as a “devious bastard” in Slumgdog Millionaire, a film winning rave reviews in Britain, had been performed to perfection.

He plays question master Prem Kumar in Who Wants to be a Millionaire? in which Jamal Malik, an 18-year-old orphan from the slums somehow manages to answer all the questions and goes on to win the Rs 20 million jackpot. The Bollywood actor said he had done it his way. Sometimes, he indicated, Bollywood was best.

Jamal is played by a UK born and bred Gujarati actor, Dev Patel, who has also turned in, by common agreement, a superb performance.

It is not as though the film is perfect. Viewers in India, where the film is due to be released, may find that the director, Danny Boyle, and the writer, Simon Baufoy, best known for The Full Monty, have given sections of the story a poisonous Hindu versus Muslim communal twist.

There is also the question of Boyle hogging all the limelight whereas the genius that makes the film work rightfully belongs to the Indian diplomat Vikas Swarup, whose remarkable novel, Q&A, has been turned into Slumdog Millionaire. Kapoor professed to like the title of the movie but admitted: “We don’t use the expression, slumdog, in Mumbai — in fact, I had never heard of the expression.”

That said, Slumdog Millionaire is likely to prove an unexpected hit. Indians will enjoy many of the questions, for example, “Who has scored the most first class centuries: Sachin Tendulkar, Ricky Pointing, Michael Slater or Jack Hobbs?”

Jamal doesn’t have a clue. Take two wrong answers away and he is left with either B) Ricky Pointing or D) Jack Hobbs. While taking a break in the lavatory, the presenter had helpfully written “B” on the steamed mirror. He had told Jamal he, too, was from the slums and had worked his way up.

Jamal still does not know the answer but he realises Prem cannot be trusted. Whatever the right answer, it is not “B”.

The right answer is, indeed, Hobbs with 197 centuries.

The movie is fast moving, very funny in parts, exceedingly cruel in others — Jamal is shown being thrashed by the police and even given electric shock treatment because the show’s presenter cannot believe that the youth has not cheated — and captures the transformation of the sprawling slums in and around Dharavi into the modern Mumbai of India shining fame.

After its premiere at the London Film Festival, attended by both Kapoor and Patel, the film has won “to die for” reviews. One such was in Evening Standard in London, with the headline, “Ravishing portrayal of India in Danny Boyle’s uplifting narrative”.

The reviewer, Nick Curtis, says “the child actors are wonderful”, as indeed they are, and that “Boyle’s hyperkinetic camera captures perfectly the commingled beauty, horror and energy of India”.

He suggests that “the Indian co-director Loveleen Tandan must take some of the credit”.

While Patel said he had enjoyed the three-month shoot in India and wanted to return the moment he stepped foot on the plane bringing him back home to London — “my parents came to the UK via Nairobi” – Kapoor said the experience of acting in a genre that was “between Bollywood and the west” was “amazing”.

Occasionally, when the director had suggested he “drop his voice” and be more understated, he had stood his ground and explained the way things were done in India.

“I play an Indian and Indians have a certain way of emoting,” Kapoor had told Danny. “We have a certain projection and throw of voice. That made it very, very challenging.”

Asked whether a new future beckoned for Bollywood actors in Indian-themed films made by western directors, the Mumbai-born Kapoor, acting in his first overseas production, responded: “If you are stuck in the leading man syndrome and try and always play the romantic role, then you have no future. If you are going for strong characters I think Indian actors will have a great future internationally.”

He had deliberately not read Swarup’s Q&A which he now hoped to do. He had wanted to live the role as envisaged by the director and scriptwriter.

Artistically, “I enjoyed every bit of it,” he said. “The buzz is already there in India but I am going to promote the film.”

Asked whether he had moved up the pecking order in Bollywood as a result of the film, he agreed: “I’ll be honest, different people do look at you differently. I have had success but this is a bonus. All my colleagues in Bombay are looking forward to this movie.”