He is Kalrudra, the baddie in Arundhati starring Koel Mallick, which releases on May 30. Indraneil Sengupta tells t2 why he wants to play a king one moment and a beggar the next.

Isn’t it a big deal for a hero to play a dark and ugly character like Kalrudra?

I treat myself as an actor, I don’t treat myself as a hero, first of all. I mean I would want to be a hero, but I treat myself as an actor who should be able to do any role. If one day I play a king, I should be equally equipped to play a beggar. I don’t want the image of Indraneil overshadowing any character. But if I am offered to play a goonda where I come fight the hero and get killed, I won’t do it. Irrespective of the length, if I have a negative role which has a tremendous impact on the film, for instance like Milan Damji in Kahaani... it was a very short role but the entire film was based on that guy... I’m game. Similarly Arundhati is about the queen (Koel) and Kalrudra. Arundhati is the heroine and the hero of the film, and then there’s Kalrudra, the evil character.

Won’t your women fans cringe seeing you in that look?

Really? I don’t think so. Am I not bored trying to look good all the time? So it’s great to look bad and different. I find that very enjoyable. And I want women to cringe because the character is such. If I’m able to make people hate Kalrudra, then I know I have done my job well. For the two hours while watching Arundhati women should cringe. But otherwise, please love me! (Smiles)

How did your wife Barkha react when she saw you as Kalrudra in the promos?

No, she didn’t go OMG! She said that I was looking scary but pretty nice! See, when I agreed to do Arundhati I thought of it to be a very negative and dramatic character, very loud and I wanted to give it a try thinking it would be fun. But on the first day when I went for the shoot, I realised I had made the worst decision of my life because my make-up took three hours with four people doing it simultaneously and it took 45 minutes to take it off. It was terrible! I hated those days! I had black colour inside my nails. I wanted to go for a pedicure. I couldn’t because there’s no point unless you finish the shoot. The black colour had gone to the crevices of my nails.

You’ve played quite a few negative characters — in Autograph, Kahaani, Mishawr Rawhoshyo and now Arundhati. Do you enjoy playing it?

I enjoy portraying grey characters. Out-and-out negative characters are not challenging because there’s no graph; same goes for out-and-out positive characters. A grey character has more graph, there are fluctuations, which is superb to play. I loved playing Shuvobrata in Autograph. Although he looked very normal, he was very real. He felt jealous, he felt angry, he felt love, he sobbed... there was so much to do.

You’ve done over 20 films in your six years as an actor in Tollywood. Are you happy with the choices you’ve made?

Many a time my decisions have not worked but I wouldn’t say I have taken wrong desicions because there was some factor or the other at work behind every decision. An actor works because of various reasons — one is to make a name for himself, to prove himself as an actor, to grow and take up more challenges and then it’s also his livelihood. Then there are certain roles we do just for awards.... I don’t regret it. There are films that haven’t worked... most films don’t work. The ratio is seven-eight flops to one hit! Most of my desicions haven’t worked. But I stand by all of them....

I had asked Bumbada (Prosenjit) how many films he had done, he said about 300-plus films. The other day I was talking to Jisshu (Sengupta) and he said he has done 89-90 films. I was like, what?! At the rate I am going, I don’t think I will ever catch up with even Jisshu, forget Bumbada. Six years, 20 films is not a very high number in Tollywood. You can actually end up doing 12 films a year. And I do get offers to do 12 films in a year or even more. If we were in an industry which gave actors the luxury to take a break and do one film at a time, I would have loved to do that. But unfortunately we don’t have that luxury, so we do more films.

More than 12 film offers a year is a great thing!

Thankfully, I haven’t been out of work for the last six years. I have chosen to not do a lot of films so that I could take a break and be with my family, but I never had to wait and wonder when the next offer was going to come.

Among your contemporaries — Jisshu, Abir Chatterjee and Parambrata Chattopadhyay — whose career graph do you envy?

I think all of them are very good actors. Abir is superb, Param is very good, Jisshu is a very good actor. I might sound boastful but it’s an honest observation that somehow I can fit into a wider variety of things than any one of them, which I feel is a plus for me. There are certain characters that are made for Param, certain characters for which Abir is the right person but I feel I have got the chance to play a variety of roles, whether the films have worked or not is a different thing. I have been lucky enough to be experimented with and to have been given the chance to fit into various characters.