Method acting is a word that is thrown about quite often in the film industry. The technique is much deeper than most laymen can think. It is a set of rehearsed methods designed to help actors become more authentic and expressive by helping them relate to, comprehend, and feel the inner motivations and feelings of a character. While Marlon Brando is credited with having been among the first lot of actors who brought out method acting in Hollywood, back home we had the ever versatile Balraj Sahni who was considered as one of the first method actors in Bollywood. Balraj Sahni is most well known to today’s audience for appearing in the evergreen song Ae Mere Zohra Jabeen from the 1965 film Waqt. He debuted in Hindi cinema much before that. A top star in the 1950s, Balraj Sahni believed that in order to play characters of the everyday common man, one had to move away from the glamour of the industry and interact with people on the grassroot level. Balraj Sahni used to wear a fake moustache and sit at the railway station for hours, observing and interacting with people to find out the nuances of his role.
In the 1953-film Do Bigha Zameen, Balraj Sahni played a rickshaw puller and went to unimaginable lengths to breathe life into the role. In his autobiography, he had written, “I simply stopped thinking about the academic theories of acting. Instead, I entered into the soul of that middle-aged rickshaw-wallah, which was why I was so eminently successful in playing the role. I do not think any book on acting could have taught me what that unlettered villager did! I learned a lesson that day.”
To practise for the role, he pulled a rickshaw barefoot in the scorching heat of Kolkata for hours. He had developed blisters on his foot as a result, but the actor would not relent. At Dilip Kumar’s suggestion, K Asif placed Balraj Sahni in the 1951 film Hulchal as a jailer. Balraj Sahni was detained after violence broke out during a procession he was attending while the movie was being filmed. He spent the next three months in prison after that. He was granted permission to shoot the film while in jail at request from the producer. Every morning, the actor would arrive at the set dressed in jail clothes, shoot in jail clothes, and then return to the jail for the evening.
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