Actor Jisshu Sengupta’s journey from Bengal to Bollywood

In the late ’90s, the Bengali mega-serial Mahaprabhu was a road to instant stardom for the then 20-year-old. Bengali films followed but they never matched up to the success of his maiden television outing. Solo hero projects fell flat, but Sengupta found himself in the reckoning in big budget, multi-starrer films of acclaimed directors such as Gautam Ghose and Shyam Benegal.

It was only later, when he met director Rituparno Ghosh that Sengupta began to put more thought into his choice of films. “It was Rituda who taught me how to approach a character,” he says. Under Ghosh’s tutelage, he became the restrained Shekhar, office colleague to Radhika (Bipasha Basu) in Shob Choritro Kalponik for whom she develops a weakness, and Partho, a homosexual lover in the director’s last film Chitrangada. Earlier this year, he gave a critically-acclaimed performance in director Srijit Mukherji’s National Award-winning film Jaatishwar and has two other films by the director — Nirbaak and an unnamed film — up his sleeves. “After Nirbaak, where I am cast opposite Sushmita Sen, I play a very dark negative role in Srijit’s next,” says the actor who also hosts the musical reality show Sa Re Ga Ma Pa in Kolkata.

So what does he expect to do in Bollywood? “It’s not like I want to act only as intense characters and in serious cinema. I have a fairly good comic timing, I can dance reasonably well and romance my heroine. I am a spontaneous actor and I am up for any role that is challenging,” he says.