The scene stealer

Arunima Mishra on Deepak Dobriyal, whose bit roles have fetched him a large following

When the star cast of Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra’s 3 Thay Bhai, a story of three brothers, went to Nagpur recently for pre-launch publicity, people recognised Om Puri and Shreyas Talpade but could not put a name to the third brother, Deepak Dobriyal. “Pappi jee aa gaye” (Pappi is here), they kept saying, referring to Pappi, the character Dobriyal played in his last release, Tanu Weds Manu. Any other actor would have been devastated but Dobriyal sees it as an endorsement of his acting. “No one knows me by my name,” he says. “I’ve overheard the audience saying, ‘He’ll do something different’. As long as they [the fans] have faith in me, I’ll keep taking risks.”

This is a throwback to the heydays of “art” films when there was pride in being an actor and not a star. Dobriyal could well be the last of that forgotten breed of performers.

Dobriyal has done nine films so far, and no two roles have been similar. If he was evil incarnate in Vishal Bhardwaj’s omkara, he was the silent muscleman in Anurag Kashyap’s Gulaal, the agonised Muslim in Mehra’s Delhi 6 and the hero’s best friend in Aanand Rai’s Tanu Weds Manu. In this last, Dobriyal held the film together with his comic act in spite of a poorly-etched script. He won the Filmfare Special Performance Award for omkara in 2006 and the Apsara Award for best performance in a negative role in 2010 for Gulaal. When asked recently to name an actor she would like to work with in the future, Kiran Rao of Dhobi Ghat-fame promptly named Dobriyal.

Film critics believe that Dobriyal can steal the show in any movie he chooses to act in. “There is a notion in Bollywood that the character actor or the supporting actor must match the hero’s status. But Dobriyal has proved it wrong because what works is how good you are on-screen,” says film critic Taran Adrash. “I remember after I came out of the screening of omkara, I asked Vishal, who is the actor with Saif [Ali Khan]?” Actor, lyricist and music director Piyush Mishra, who worked with Dobriyal in Maqbool and Gulaal, finds him an actor of rare talent. “I have known him since 1995 when he was doing theatre. Very few in the industry have something extra in them. It gets tougher when you don’t have the height and the looks of a hero to click here. But he did it with omkara.”

Dobriyal is popular, too, among fans who value good cinema. Writes Dushyant Arora, who created The Deepak Dobriyal Fan Club on Facebook: “Dobriyal may be scrawny and nondescript among the flashy stars of Bollywood but he’s in his element as an actor. Whether in plays or movies, he commands a second look.” Some, like Ranchi’s Angshuman Moitra, even feel that Dobriyal will overtake the Khans of Bollywood one day. Shyam Choudhary, a student from Dhanbad, posts in a fan site: “This actor has a class which few of the main actors have in this industry, but unfortunately he is not born to some (sic.) limelight family....keep up the good work.”

Dobriyal started his career in 1994 with Asmita, a theatre group in Delhi. He worked there for six years. He followed it up with a year with NK Sharma’s Act One. Why cinema — was it for money or for the popular appreciation that theatre does not bring in today? “I had no desire to enter cinema. Theatre took all my time; I got no time to read, watch movies or listen to music. But it was no cakewalk in Mumbai. It took me three years before I got Bhardwaj’s Maqbool.” Then came Gulaal (2009), omkara and Amrit Sagar's 1971 at one go, and things started to change. This was followed by Shaurya, Delhi 6 and 13B. Of these, some like Gulaal, omkara and Delhi 6 scored high at the box office, others flopped.

Does this mean no more theatre? “While theatre is pure dedication, cinema is my love. Neither do I have the money nor the time to dedicate myself to theatre. But I want to direct a play if I get an opportunity now,” says he.

What next? Dobriyal says he aspires to do roles in mature love stories, or, say, “an extra-marital affair”. Or films that profile legends such as Dhyan Chand, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan or Bhagat Singh. “There is a story in everyone’s life which has something to offer. I also wanted to act in the movie on south-Indian actor Silk Smitha [where Vidya Balan is playing the lead] but it is a female-lead role,” says Dobriyal.

When it comes to choosing films, like other actors, Dobriyal too is careful. His next release, Daayen Ya Baayen, directed by debutant Bela Negi, is the first full-length Hindi feature film from Uttarakhand. “It was a film made with just Rs 1.5 crore. Negi shot continuously for 50 days and 97 per cent of its actors were picked up from Kumaon [Nainital, Almora, Chaukori, Bageshwar and Ranikhet], people who had no experience of acting and many had not even watched a movie in their life. It was a different world,” says he. “I did it for the director, because she had me in mind for that particular role, and I was the character.” Dobriyal claims he got 17 offers last year but turned down every one of them because each offer lacked something.

Next to release will be Mumbai Cutting. Currently under production, it’s a movie with 10 short films and is directed by 10 directors. Dobriyal is part of Kundan Shah’s Hero.

“Life comprises show-reels. What is important is that you set your foot right for the next assignment,” he waxes philosophical.