In the line of
“I’ll be your mirror, reflect what you
are in case you don’t know…”
__ Lou Reed

Drawing his inspiration from film, art, and a keen observation of everyday life, Altaf @ Nabila’s Palette has been colored by more than a decade of experience, and his canvas has included everyone from unfamiliar faces to socialites, movie stars, rock stars, and supermodels. Whether utilitarian or transformative, his makeup eschews Disguise in favor of revelation.

Today, you’re one of the best stylists in the country. That’s something that couldn’t have been a smooth ride – given the kind of person you are and the kind of taskmaster that your mentor, Nabila is.

You seem to be the Queen of Big Budget films. After the super-duper ‘Race’ and ‘Singh Is Kinng’, you have yet another biggie lined up for release — ‘Yuvvraaj’. How does it feel?

It feels great but I don’t think budget has anything to do with the quality of a film. It’s the content and presentation which matters at the end of the day. Yuvvraaj being a musical drama, it calls for grand visuals and a certain larger than life canvas.

The film seems like a complete entertaining drama. Could you tell us something more about the film?

He laughed at the realisation, “You cannot miss me for too long. I will be back.” The Bollywood Badshah explained his absence. He was busy “with incessant shooting” for his home production Billoo Barber and Yashraj’s Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi which he hopes to complete before plunging into preparations for the next Twenty20 tournament.

During this time the ‘King’ tag which he wore for years came within grabbing distance of other Bollywood contenders. It is a situation that amuses him. “It’s better to be known as King Khan than Pauper Khan,” admitted SRK. “But this is just an image, a clever alliteration by the media. My kids don’t wake me up in the morning saying, ‘Get up, King’. They say, ‘Get up, Daddy’. That says it all. It’s far away from reality.”

Q. You return with ‘Golmaal’ again. Are you looking forward to it?

Of course I am, because the first part was really appreciated and still people come up to me and say that they’ve formed ‘Golmaal Returns’ groups which is on the net also. When we started ‘Golmaal Returns’, we were very hesitant as it had to be funnier than or at least as funny as the first part. So there were many scripts we looked at but eventually we found one and we all thought that it was funnier than the first one.

Q. Did Sharman Joshi’s absence make you feel vulnerable?

Actress Minissha Lamba worked really hard to shape up to carry off a bikini with panache in Sanjay Gadhvi’s Kidnap, but she credits co-star Imran Khan for helping her maintain her weight.

“Imran helped me in my weight loss regime,” said Minissha.

“During the shootings, I was on a high-protein diet. While I was surviving mostly on protein bars, Imran used to get his dabba (lunch box) from home with delicious keema (minced meat).

“The aroma of the keema always tempted me, so Imran stopped eating in front of me. He used to sit in a corner, far away from me. Since I couldn’t smell it, I didn’t get tempted,” she quipped.

She is a filmmaker with a degree in theatre and religion from Mount Holyoke college in New York. She works out of offices in New York City, Santa Fe, and Lahore. Her goal is to create dialogue through the movies she produces, both within the Muslim world, internationally and especially the USA. Her first feature length film, Kashf is set to hit theatres nationwide on the 15th of December.

Imran Khan has changed his image in his second film.

Says the nervous second-timer, “After Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na, Kidnap was the first script that I actually liked. I decided on doing it instinctively. And I’ve a completely different role from what I did in Jaane Tu…I admit Sanjay Dutt has a bigger part in my next release Kidnap.

And rightly so. He’s a much bigger star than me and obviously the focus would be on him. I am thrilled with my part in Kidnap. Incidentally Sanjay Dutt is also my co-star in Luck. Apparently there’s some kind of a mysterious link between the two of us.”

Genelia D’Souza, Imran Khan’s petite and perky co-star in ‘Jaane Tu… Ya Jaane Na’, brushes off rumours of any relationship with Riteish Deshmukh with a “we’re just friends.”

Genelia teamed up with Riteish for her first Hindi film ‘Tujhe Meri Kasam’ and they were seen together once again in ‘Masti’. While ‘Tujhe Meri Kasam’ bit the dust at the box office, ‘Masti’ hit bull’s eye. But the film’s success didn’t help much in shaping her career.

The popularity of Imran Khan, who is just one film old, has soared so much that he says he has been “reduced to doing interviews in cars, in the shower, anywhere” and is being offered huge amounts of money to just show his face at parties.

“I’m now reduced to doing interviews in cars, in the shower, anywhere…thanks to the promotion of ‘Kidnap’. I’m also being offered ridiculous sums of money to just attend functions, parties and events,” Imran told us.

Whether one accepts it or not, in today’s Bollywood child actors are as important as established heroes. Anyone can understand this untold truth by having a glance at the characters children are offered with nowadays. Let’s check out how Zain, the child star of upcoming film ‘Hari Puttar’, shares his opinion on this issue…

Q. You are the lead in Hari Puttar. How do you react to that?
A. I think it’s a great chance that I am offered with because there are many senior actors who are still struggling for their solo appearance. It’s really the grace of god. I am very happy with that and I thank Lucky uncle, Mirchi Movies and all the people associated with the film from the core of my heart for giving me such an opportunity.