Sharad Kelkar: I am a common man and have to run my house too

His recent release, Bhuj: The Pride of India, fetched him good reviews, and Sharad Kelkar couldn’t be happier. What he counts as the best compliment is people telling him they could only see the character, and not him.

“For any actor, the best thing is people seeing the character and not actor in the film. If you look and be the part, that is a compliment. People never saw me in the film, and that is the victory of an actor,” says the 45-year-old, who played the role of Army officer Ram Karan.

While his television shows and films all gave him enough opportunities to prove himself, there are bound to be some of them which Kelkar had to take up for various reasons other than just the role. And the actor admits that he did compromise sometimes.

“Obviously yes. I am a common man, I have to run my house also. If I was single and didn’t have that responsibility then yes I can take that chance of doing stuff which I want to do. But I am a family man and have responsibilities, so sometimes I don’t think about it,” he admits.

He in fact questions what is wrong about it. “Somebody is making a project with passion, respecting me and giving me a role, and paying me too. I don’t think there is anything wrong. Work is work, I will give my 100 percent whether it is a small or a big film, web show or TV, anchoring an event… rest is the luck of the project,” he explains

The actor feels it is a ‘miracle’ that some of the projects that he expected the least from, turned out to be pretty well. He says, “You never know what will turn into gold. The only policy I follow is keep on working and giving your 100 percent. Rest, you leave it in the hands of God. You must have heard from a lot of actors, and a prominent one is Akshay Kumar, that 70 percent is luck and 30 percent is hard work, we have to leave something to luck also. You can’t be perfect every time, you might go right or wrong.”