Zafar Supari, Iqbal Pasina, Ramu Kaalia, Kevda Thakur,  Bukamph Singh…. Well, if you have screen names like that, you can only be a villain.

And no surprise that this fact holds amply true for a particular gentleman who answers to the name of Mukesh Rishi. In fact, with his heavy build, menacing eyes and thick voice, Rishi can play the perfect menacing villain, whether in Bollywood or in films from South India.

But the Jammu-born Rishi, a soft-spoken person in real life, is much more than just an adept screen villain, something which was proved in John Mathew Matthan’s Aamir Khan-starrer Sarfarosh where he earned a lot of applause playing Inspector Salim, an able assistant to a terrorism-fighting police officer played by Khan, and in critically-acclaimed Punjabi film Warish Shah, where he played Maqdoom Baba, the guru of the great sufi saint.

And that is what Rishi is seeking to prove before filmgoers as well as filmmakers, cutting down on his “villain” assignments and looking for roles that offer him with scope to display his acting talent in a wide variety of roles.

“That is what was in my mind when I decided to cut down on my assignments in Bollywood and decided to build up a portfolio of films in other languages too, in Kannada, Telugu, Malayalam and Punjabi,” he says, explaining why a few years ago he virtually vanished from Hindi film scene.

“In Waris Shah, I played ‘Maqdoom Baba’, Waris Shah’s guru. Unlike in villain roles, where there’s not much scope to show your skills as an actor, this role gave me ample scope to satisfy my inner urges as an actor,” he says.
Rishi has found that there is difference between playing a villain in Bollywood and one in films in the South.

“In south, villains are part of the film’s publicity process, while in Hindi films the scope for villain roles is only now increasing. I moved to south a few years ago, cutting down on my Hindi assignments, because I felt that I was getting better opportunities in the South.

The fact is that they proudly presented me as top draw in a number of movies in villain roles, though I have played positive roles too,” he says, counting Sarfarosh and Gardish as two of his best roles in Hindi cinema.

Rishi is quite clear about what he wants to do as an actor, and that is what he is seeking to tell filmmakers through his films. “There is no dearth of directors in Bollywood – the question is how much they trust me an actor. I can only send the message by playing different kind of characters,” he says, hoping to find a way out in times when even heroes are getting to have negative shades more and more.

The actor, for whom utilisation of any free time means working out in the gym, is looking forward to two films he has in his kitty. “The first one is It Could Be You, directed by Rajiv Rai’s former assistant Taranjeet, in which I play a friend of the character enacted by Naseeruddin Shah.

It was a great experience to have acted alongside a marvellous actor like him, apart from, of course, Kiron Kher,” he says, excited that the story of generational gap gave him enough scope to satisfy the actor in him. The second film he is looking forward to is Lahore, which is in its preliminary stages still.

Rishi, whose experience of having seen from close quarters how his relatives in Army and police led their lifestyles came in handy in Sarfarosh, is also keen to attempt comedy, “depending on whether I get an offer”. For reference of his comic talent, he points out the bumbling brother-in-law to Abhishek Bachchan in Run.

“I like Deven Verma style of comedy, which is very subtle and restrained yet gives the best laughs,” he says.

Rishi, who spent a few years in New Zealand after marrying his sweetheart while in Fiji, doing some modelling work that spurred his acting instincts, is happy that Hindi film industry in recent times has churned out films like Omkara, Rang De Basanti and Lage Raho Munnabhai.

“While Omkara is a very sincere film from all aspects – camera, lighting, acting, script – while films like Eklavya and Krrish are at par with Hollywood films in technical excellence,” he analyses, of course, with the hope that he will find meatier roles in times to come in films with substance, like the ones he counted. Are the directors listening?