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" Farhan Akhtar is part of a vanguard of filmmakers credited with breathing new life into the Hindi film industry and heralded as the &amp;quot;future of Indian cinema&amp;quot;. Son of Sholay screenwriter and celebrated poet and lyricist Javed Akhtar and acclaimed screenwriter Honey Irani, he has an enviable film pedigree, but his fervour for films - that has driven his success across many disciplines - is all his own. Brought up on an informal tutelage of Bachchan and De Niro, Farhan&amp;#039;s early cinematic influences were to form the cornerstone of a flourishing film career that would see him intermittently don the caps of director, writer, actor, singer, lyricist and TV host.   His first script Dil Chahta Hai starring Aamir Khan sparked a new wave of cinema for a young generation of filmmakers who defied convention to create films that were meaningful to them and reflected the experience of urban Indian youth. The path-breaking film also won the then-27-year-old his first National Award.  Farhan went on to make his British debut as the English lyricist for the soundtrack of Gurinder Chadha&amp;#039;s Bride and Prejudice in 2004, and in 2008 he stepped in front of the camera for his role as aspiring rock god Aditya Shroff in the acclaimed Rock On!, winning him his second National Award.  As producer, script writer and star of Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara (2011), he won two National Awards and in the same year took on the gargantuan undertaking of directing Shah Rukh Khan in a remake of Don, the role first made famous by the legendary Amitabh Bachchan. While he is singularly motivated by his passion for films, his personal outrage at atrocities committed against women in India moved him to launch the MARD campaign, promoting gender equality in India.  Farhan now takes on the challenging task of portraying Indian sporting legend Milkha Singh in the eagerly awaited biopic Bhaag Milkha Bhaag.  In an interview with Digital Spy, Farhan Akhtar revealed the driving force behind his professional accomplishments, how playing Milkha Singh inspired him and why Amitabh Bachchan and Robert De Niro can take some of the credit for his burgeoning career.   Bhaag Milkha Bhaag is based on the true story of legendary Indian athlete Milkha Singh. What was it about this story that first engaged you and made you want to commit to a role that is so challenging in so many ways? &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s a very moving, very compelling human story. To have a character whose story begins at partition, where he&amp;#039;s orphaned overnight and arrives in India with millions of people as a refugee; and then really starting from nothing, finds the courage, the determination, to try to find his purpose and emerges as one of India&amp;#039;s brightest sporting stars. It&amp;#039;s an incredible story of how this actually transpired and what it took. &amp;quot;I must say I didn&amp;#039;t know so much about the history of this man and I do believe that there&amp;#039;s many people like me who don&amp;#039;t. So via this film and by my involvement in it, we&amp;#039;ve done our best to bring it out to the masses and let people see what made Milkha Singh, MIlkha Singh. &amp;quot;We all know him as this iconic figure, but very few people know what his life was about. And his life is a real example for people to learn from, and not in the way that we&amp;#039;re trying to teach anyone anything. It kind of happens organically when you hear his story and it inspires you and it moves you and it makes you feel like, &amp;#039;Wow, I wish I could do something more with my life&amp;#039;. So all these emotions came to me when I first heard it.&amp;quot; Can you tell us about the training regime you went through to physically prepare yourself for this role? &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;ve been through the best available athletic training that I could get. So I really dedicated about a year and a half to get myself, not only physically looking that way, because that&amp;#039;s probably the easy part when you work out and you follow a diet and things, but this allowed me to maintain a zone where you&amp;#039;re feeling extremely competitive in terms of when you go onto a track. It does things to you. It makes you feel more like an athlete to start with when you&amp;#039;re living the life and you&amp;#039;re living by that kind of discipline. &amp;quot;Also there&amp;#039;s a lot of races in the film because that&amp;#039;s what he did and he grew and went from strength to strength through many contests. So just to approach those with the experience of having been an athlete and with the knowledge of what an athlete&amp;#039;s life was like - that was very crucial. &amp;quot;The physicality of the role was the last thing that I wanted to think about when we were making the film. I just wanted to be there with the director talking about the emotion of this scene or talking about what communication is necessary and not really worrying about, &amp;#039;Oh no, I have to run 100 metres&amp;#039; and then go and think about how am I gonna do that eight times a day.&amp;quot; You&amp;#039;ve achieved some great milestones in your career and accomplishments far beyond your years. I&amp;#039;m really intrigued as to the factors and influences that have driven you to such successes? &amp;quot;Thank you so much. Well I feel there have been a lot of factors. I have been a fan of movies from a very young age and somehow the magic of that - every single time I hear something or read something that could be made into a wonderful film or something somebody is asking me to be a part of - that connects. It just makes me feel like I&amp;#039;m going to be part of something magical again. &amp;quot;I think that&amp;#039;s the big thing, because if it&amp;#039;s a big film of course that&amp;#039;s how it is, but even more than that there&amp;#039;s performances, there&amp;#039;s music, there&amp;#039;s the way it&amp;#039;s photographed, the locations, it&amp;#039;s an amazing, amazing world that you create. And that to me has been something that has always been tremendously fascinating. And I think this is why from a very young age I was committed to being part of the storytelling in whichever way possible.&amp;quot;  You&amp;#039;ve worked with some of the greatest talents in the Hindi film industry and I hear Robert De Niro is a big influence. What was the impact of De Niro on you personally and who are the Indian star and the US star you might like to pit against each other in a film? &amp;quot;De Niro&amp;#039;s a huge influence yes. Wow. I don&amp;#039;t know. I&amp;#039;d definitely love to work with Mr De Niro. I&amp;#039;ve been a huge admirer of his work, like I said, from a very young age. He&amp;#039;s probably one of the reasons I was drawn to what an actor can do. You must also understand that when we were growing up there were actors doing some really great films and Mr Amitabh Bachchan was a case in point. &amp;quot;The fact is they were very eager to change themselves in each part. And they were very good at what they did and they did it extremely sincerely and you loved them for it. But for me when I was looking in from the outside what someone like De Niro was doing, he was just constantly becoming another person in every role that he did and that was very fascinating for me to see. &amp;quot;I think probably a combination of being a huge fan of Mr Bachchan and of course a huge fan and admirer of what De Niro was doing and I think the influence on me was in enjoying the acting talent in people and enjoying performance. Who to pit against who? I don&amp;#039;t know. I think if I had a choice I&amp;#039;d like to be in a film with De Niro.&amp;quot; You&amp;#039;re part of a generation of young filmmakers who have really breathed new life into Hindi cinema with films like Dil Chahta Hai, which was a turning point in the industry&amp;#039;s fortunes. Were films like Lakshya and Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara informed by your own life, and when writing is there naturally a lot of yourself in your characters?  &amp;quot;Some films allow that. Others don&amp;#039;t. For example, I wouldn&amp;#039;t see myself at all as a character like Karthik in Karthik Calling Karthik. So some films allow that to happen and some don&amp;#039;t. When it does then it&amp;#039;s nice because you can always draw a lot from your experiences and draw a lot from people that you know and who are friends and bring that into the relationship of the character that you&amp;#039;re writing about or pretending to be. But it&amp;#039;s rare that that happens. &amp;quot;Excel - our company - is associated with various people who keep telling us, &amp;#039;You keep making films about friendship and friends&amp;#039;, but realistically if you think about it, we&amp;#039;ve been making films now for 13 years, and out of that 13 years there&amp;#039;s been three films that are really about friends. It&amp;#039;s just that people remember those films, which is why it&amp;#039;s kind of associated with us.&amp;quot;  You wear a lot of hats as writer, director, producer, singer, TV host, campaigner and activist and you also like jumping out of planes. What is the personal ethos with which you approach life and films that makes you so apparently fearless?  &amp;quot;I don&amp;#039;t know. I really don&amp;#039;t know. After Rock On!, when I started acting and I sang in the film, people asked me, &amp;#039;What was the need to sing in your film?&amp;#039; and things like that. I really don&amp;#039;t have an answer for it. In terms of what made me do it? It just felt like the right thing to do. What the challenge is I don&amp;#039;t know. &amp;quot;I feel it probably goes back to a time when, if you remember the character Lakshya which was played by Hrithik - the thing I connected with that character was that he was so directionless and that was me at a certain time in my life. Which is what I could completely identify with. Like, here&amp;#039;s a guy who&amp;#039;s a happy person, but at the same time really doesn&amp;#039;t have the focus in terms of what it is he really wants to be. And I always used to feel that that&amp;#039;s okay because time itself will play out with the need or the importance to start doing something. &amp;quot;I think at that time, the worry that everyone had, mainly my parents and my sister was maybe they thought that my life might not amount to much or what is this guy going to do? There seems to be no future. Things like that. I think probably it just goes back to where it almost became a challenge to do something. And I think that fire gets accelerated every time something comes along that tells me, &amp;#039;Why don&amp;#039;t you give this a shot?&amp;#039; And once you&amp;#039;ve committed to it I think that&amp;#039;s another side of a personality of not holding back or doing the best that you can possibly do. &amp;quot;I think the need to constantly keep trying new challenges, accepting new challenges and moving into different fields and saying &amp;#039;OK, let&amp;#039;s see what happens&amp;#039; - I think that probably comes from saying, &amp;#039;OK, I have to now either prove to myself or the person that is most stressed out about this&amp;#039;, which at that time probably was my mother. It probably comes from some kind of latent, residual impact that that had at that time in my life.&amp;quot;  The MARD campaign is a fantastic initiative which you have personally championed. What has been the effect of this campaign to promote gender equality on both men and women in India and what are your future plans for the organisation?  &amp;quot;The heartening thing is, like you, there have been so many people supporting us who write in. Whether it&amp;#039;s on social network or those who get in touch with the organisation that we&amp;#039;ve set up, where people are constantly receiving mail and forwarding it to me. Of course I do reply when they ask me something different, not something that you can get from the information on the website, whether it&amp;#039;s something they want me to know or something that they want to share from their own experience. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s heartening to see the amount of people who share this concern. So that to start with makes you feel optimistic. It starts making you feel that it&amp;#039;s important to keep heading down this path and keep the volume up. I feel as far as change in society goes that is probably going to be something that is generational rather than overnight. &amp;quot;We&amp;#039;re trying to reach out to younger boys, younger girls. And we&amp;#039;re starting to get them to understand from a very young age about the importance of gender equality. How an imbalance in that can really mess up society at large and it can manifest in crime or it can manifest in violence against women, whether it&amp;#039;s a rape or underage marriages, or it can manifest in female foeticide. It can manifest in many different things. &amp;quot;So just starting to get people to understand the importance of this equality is crucial. Because that&amp;#039;s where we really start seeing change at a larger level like we want to. So hopefully we&amp;#039;ll keep at it and we&amp;#039;ll stay at it. It&amp;#039;s a lifetime commitment. Hopefully we&amp;#039;ll start seeing the benefits of everyone raising their voice together.&amp;quot;  Watch the trailer for Bhaag Milkha Bhaag below:       "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.digitalspy.com/movies/bollywood/interviews/a497426/farhan-akhtar-interview-id-love-to-work-with-robert-de-niro/>