Thaindian News

By Joginder Tuteja
Mumbai, Feb 22 (IANS) With a Padma Shri and quite a few hits tucked under his belt, Saif Ali Khan is set to launch his second production venture and spy thriller “Agent Vinod” and says the delayed project is very much on.

“A lot has been said about ‘Agent Vinod’, but we are very much on track. Final touches are being given to the script and at the end of March we should have the film on the floors,” Saif, 39, told IANS in an interview.

After “Love Aaj Kal”, this will be his second production, “Agent Vinod”. It will be directed by Sriram Raghavan.

“Meanwhile, I definitely want to work on ‘Race 2′. To do a romantic comedy is also something that stands high up in my list, but then I am just waiting for a great script to come my way.”

Taking a trip down memory lane, he said it was superhit “Hum Tum” that bailed him out during trying times.

“I would think that ‘Hum Tum’ was a definite milestone film in my career. Yes, there was ‘Kal Ho Na Ho’ which was a good success as well, but then I was a second lead there. ‘Hum Tum’ was a solo hit and had the momentum going for me,” Saif told IANS.

“Soon followed ‘Salaam Namaste’, which further set the pace in my career. In the earlier years, ‘Yeh Dillagi’ was definitely a landmark movie. Then came ‘Main Khiladi Tu Anari’, which again worked quite well for me,” added Saif who is one of the top actors today and a successful producer also.

Success came to him after a lean patch where nothing seemed to be working for him. With many of his films belonging to diverse genres failing at the box office, Saif was pretty much looking at the bottom of the barrel.

If one goes into flashback mode and takes a journey back in time, it wasn’t too far back when he was dancing to the tune of “Main hoon aashiq awara” (”Aashiq Awara”) and “Ole, Ole” (”Yeh Dillagi”). Today, with Saif named for a Padma Sri, he has come a long way.

“Yeah, it was a disastrous patch and this is where ‘Hum Saath Saath Hai’ came in handy. There were also ‘Kachche Dhaage’ and ‘Kya Kehna’ which were decent successes and then of course ‘Dil Chahta Hai’ which was another landmark film,” said Saif.

Is there any other film that he believes brought a complete turnaround in the way he was looked at as an actor?

“Other than the aforementioned films like ‘Hum Tum’, ‘Salaam Namaste’ and ‘Kal Ho Naa Ho’, diverse films like ‘Parineeta’ and ‘Ek Haseena Thi’ brought in further recognition.

” ‘Being Cyrus’ was nice and offbeat too and then considering the kind of perception that people had for me, ‘Omkara’ turned out to be huge as it showed quite some range. And now as we stand, I have a production like ‘Love Aaj Kal’. So, yeah, it’s not that bad after all.”

(Joginder Tuteja can be contacted at joginder_tuteja@rediffmail.com)