With every film Nawazuddin Siddiqui is demolishing the gap between a star and an actor.

He still takes time to understand the question. He still struggles to construct a sentence in English but he still has a clean slate as far as embarrassing choices are concerned. Every time you feel you have seen enough of Nawazuddin Siddiqui, he surprises you with his choice of role. Every time you feel that he will come a little more assured off screen, he disappoints you in a good way. “I want to stay curious, I want to remain grounded. Satisfaction breeds contempt.” This year he has already bamboozled us with “Badlapur”, where he made us gradually melt for what seemed like a pervert character in the opening scene and this week he is at it again with “Bajrangi Bhaijaan” where he is playing a Pakistani reporter who apparently helps Salman Khan to take a mute Pakistani kid who has strayed into India to cross over. “Reporters are almost family for actors. After every film we get to speak to a variety of them.” And the best part, he says, is the media has got over its fascination about his struggle. Now, he says, the focus is solely on his craft. “Here I am playing a simple reporter who in trying to get his story stumbles on a bigger issue,” Nawaz doesn’t want to give away about the motives of the character. “My aim is to not make it so realistic that it goes out of sync with the film’s voice. In ‘Kick’, I was deliberately kept myself two notes above normal because that was the tone of the film. Here there is no such requirement but there is no need to become a fly on the wall either.”

“Bajrangi Bhaijaan” is releasing this week, but Nawaz is eager to talk about “Mountain Man”, whose first promo has just come out. The Ketan Mehta film is a biopic on Dashrath Manjhi who grabbed headlines as the old man from Bihar who carved a way through a mountain after his wife died because of delay in reaching the hospital because of the circuitous route. “I do films like ‘Kick’ and ‘Bhaijaan’ so that my smaller films get noticed. But there is no compromise on quality. I have the ability to say no and I want to retain it. I have seen many of my seniors falling into a trap and ruining their careers. I don’t want to repeat their mistakes when there is plenty to choose from,” reasons Nawaz.

Talking of “Manjhi”, Nawaz says he watched his videos and spoke to people in his village Gahlour (in Gaya district) to make sense of his passion. “We shot extensively in his village to get the right ambience and dialect. My understanding of Manjhi is that he was quite upfront with his emotions. He was not somebody who would hold back his love or his revenge against nature. He is not like many of us who would moan over the lack of infrastructure and government apathy. He teases a journalist bringing out a paper should not be more difficult than breaking a mountain. His motive is clear. Don’t leave everything to God; he might have left it to us.”

He gives credit to Radhika Apte for helping him ignite passion on screen as the ladylove of Manjhi. “She is a tremendous performer who is completely uninhibited about the surroundings when she is in the character. It helps in generating a realistic romance because the entire film depends on it. It works like a lever.”

Nawaz says mainstream Hindi films have seldom focussed on a poor man’s love story. “They are too occupied with urban fantasies or period romances. Manjhi’s love is no less if not more than Shahjahan’s devotion for Mumtaz.” In a way Nawaz is like Manjhi. In an industry where face value and size matters, he has changed the discourse with a series of power-packed performance. He gives it to the times. “Like Manjhi I don’t have to wait for decades for recognition. My struggle was not as painful.”

He knows the industry constantly sees him in the persona of the common man but doesn’t mind it. “I want to play all shades of common man. The days of heroes and villains are over as we used to see in the ’70s and ’80s. Now heroes are not infallible and villains are not pitch dark. It is an interesting space for actors to be in and even stars are realising it. There is no ‘my scene your scene’ approach anymore because they are conscious that audience is realising the difference between performance and gimmickry.”

In fact Nawaz goes on to say that Salman has been his best co-actor till date. It means something considering Nawaz has worked opposite Irrfan. “Salman never saw me as Nawaz. He always responded to me as a character and this is what an actor wants because on the sets he was Pavan to me.” But does Salman know that he is playing Pavan! Nawaz laughs. “Here comes the role of the director. Kabir (Khan) understood where we are coming from and worked with him beforehand so that there are no glitches during the actual shooting. It is not like any other Salman film. Kabir comes from a documentary background. Here the story is rooted much more in realism in comparison to the image Salman carries.”

Nawaz comes from a village called Budhana near Muzaffarnagar, parts of which faced some of the worst communal clashes last year. “My village remained free of any violence because of sane advice from village elders but they could not save the neighbouring villages from falling into the communal fire. I feel politicians always try to divide people. It is up to us to see through their design. And it has been done so many times that by now even a child can understand their game. I feel the blame lies with us.” Nawaz says the same yardstick applies to relations with Pakistan. “Common people on both sides do not want violence. Bajrangi conveys this message in simple, emotional terms.” Tokenism doesn’t help either. There was a time when a Muslim character would go to a Hindu actor and vice versa. “It should be according to who is best suited for the part.”

Meanwhile, he continues with his package of big and small. “After this I will be balancing ‘Ghoomketu’, a small budget comedy with ‘Raees’ (Shah Rukh Khan-starrer), where I am playing a cop.”