Emraan Hashmi has said that he benefitted a lot from his tag of ‘serial-kisser’ in films, but wants to move on now. He also revealed that he gave that tag to himself as a joke, but it stuck with the audience and the media. Emraan was speaking to Indian Express about his new role of an antagonist in Salman Khan's recent film Tiger 3.
Talking about his 20-year-long journey, Emraan told the newspaper that he did not start his journey as the traditional main lead and worked in very different genre of films. Emraan plays Katrina Kaif's former boss in the new film that brings Salman and Katrina back as Tiger and Zoya.
“Then lies an eternal trap for all actors where if you are playing a commercial lead, you will be trapped by a certain archetype of a character or a hero. And here it was this, whatever you call it (serial kisser), it was an absurd name. It was actually given to myself as a joke but stuck with people for some reason. It stuck with the journalists and the audience and it’s not like I didn’t benefit from it. Films were doing really well at the box office,” he said.
However, he added, "At one point I felt that it had played its part and I was ready to move on before it was rejected badly. You can’t serve the same dish to people time and again. You have to do something different.”
He also said that people were not really ready but he wanted to move on and try something different. Admitting that it brought a certain “bleeding period” for him, but the industry people wondered what it was that he was doing, Emraan said that he believed moving on was important for him as an actor.
Having made his debut with the 2003 fiilm Footpath, Emraan found nationwide fame when he featured alongside Mallika Sherawat in Anurag Basu's Murder in 2004. Ever since, he featured in several movies which mostly encashed on his image of ‘serial-kisser’. These include Aashiq Banaya Apne, Raaz 3, Jannat, Murder 2, and Gangster, among many others.
Emraan is currently seen as ex-ISI agent named Aatish Rehman in Maneesh Sharma's Tiger 3 that continues to rake in numbers at the box office. The film, which released on November 12, has grossed ₹400 crore worldwide.
