Uploaded July 2026 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago
Anupama Chopra sits down with Saif Ali Khan for Cover Star on The Hollywood Reporter India, as the actor marks two foundational milestones of contemporary Hindi cinema turning a year older this summer — twenty years of Vishal Bhardwaj's Omkara in July and twenty-five years of Farhan Akhtar's Dil Chahta Hai in August. Saif looks back on what made both shoots feel like a new frontier: the live, sync-sound discipline Farhan introduced on Dil Chahta Hai, where learning your lines in advance and creating genuine silence on set was still a novelty, and the charged, diverse ensemble of Omkara, where mainstream and NSD-trained actors pushed each other and Vishal quietly handed him some of his finest ideas. He recounts the now-famous mirror sequence — including a half-joking offer to perform it nude — and how Vishal scrapped a long monologue at the last minute for a single wordless shot of Langda Tyagi smashing the glass and anointing himself in his own blood, an economy Saif still calls the most complete preparation of his career.
The conversation then turns candid and reflective. At fifty-five, and more than three decades in, Saif speaks about the near-detachment that has come to define him — a happiness with less, and an instinct to keep work and home apart inherited from his famously quiet father, the late cricketer Mansoor Ali Khan "Tiger" Pataudi, whose silence he reads as a rare kind of confidence. He is clear-eyed about the misses alongside the milestones, why he now wants every film to truly matter, and where the industry is heading, pointing to the runaway success of a film like Dhurandhar as a "before and after" moment, praising its fresh, borderless approach to film music and arguing for braver, more inventive choices. He revisits his recent Netflix cop drama Kartavya and the ending he wishes had landed differently, his villainous turn in the Telugu blockbuster Devara, and the wild-West nineties — the surrogate sensuality of song-and-dance (the infamous "rat song" included), choreographer Saroj Khan, the romance of Race opposite Katrina Kaif, and why those soundtracks remain, for him, the score of a generation's life.
#SaifAliKhan #Omkara #DilChahtaHai
00:00 Introduction
06:58 Omkara's mirror scene and nudity
13:04 Superstition and reinventing his look
19:44 Detachment, fame and his father
26:21 Why every film must matter
32:24 The romance of nineties songs
39:32 His father and silence as confidence
Anupama Chopra sits down with Saif Ali Khan for Cover Star on The Hollywood Reporter India, as the actor marks two foundational milestones of contemporary Hindi cinema turning a year older this summer — twenty years of Vishal Bhardwaj's Omkara in July and twenty-five years of Farhan Akhtar's Dil Chahta Hai in August. Saif looks back on what made both shoots feel like a new frontier: the live, sync-sound discipline Farhan introduced on Dil Chahta Hai, where learning your lines in advance and creating genuine silence on set was still a novelty, and the charged, diverse ensemble of Omkara, where mainstream and NSD-trained actors pushed each other and Vishal quietly handed him some of his finest ideas. He recounts the now-famous mirror sequence — including a half-joking offer to perform it nude — and how Vishal scrapped a long monologue at the last minute for a single wordless shot of Langda Tyagi smashing the glass and anointing himself in his own blood, an economy Saif still calls the most complete preparation of his career.
The conversation then turns candid and reflective. At fifty-five, and more than three decades in, Saif speaks about the near-detachment that has come to define him — a happiness with less, and an instinct to keep work and home apart inherited from his famously quiet father, the late cricketer Mansoor Ali Khan "Tiger" Pataudi, whose silence he reads as a rare kind of confidence. He is clear-eyed about the misses alongside the milestones, why he now wants every film to truly matter, and where the industry is heading, pointing to the runaway success of a film like Dhurandhar as a "before and after" moment, praising its fresh, borderless approach to film music and arguing for braver, more inventive choices. He revisits his recent Netflix cop drama Kartavya and the ending he wishes had landed differently, his villainous turn in the Telugu blockbuster Devara, and the wild-West nineties — the surrogate sensuality of song-and-dance (the infamous "rat song" included), choreographer Saroj Khan, the romance of Race opposite Katrina Kaif, and why those soundtracks remain, for him, the score of a generation's life.
#SaifAliKhan #Omkara #DilChahtaHai
00:00 Introduction
06:58 Omkara's mirror scene and nudity
13:04 Superstition and reinventing his look
19:44 Detachment, fame and his father
26:21 Why every film must matter
32:24 The romance of nineties songs
39:32 His father and silence as confidence
