The man behind the method

It was the 50s and the only 'kind' of actors were 'heroes' such as Dilip Kumar, Ashok Kumar, Dev Anand… and those who mimicked them. Yet in the capital of the newly partitioned India was a young man studying a combination of English and Urdu Literature along with Statistics and Economics for his unique BA-Comm degree. English and Urdu for his soul; and Economics and Statistics to appease his practical father.

Roshan Taneja knew he had the talent to be an actor, but not the cookie cutter height and shoulder span expected of heroes in the film industry in Mumbai. "So I thought, why not train formally as an actor. This would add to my credentials. I was already doing theatre in college."

Roshan Taneja now is the accepted acting guru to more established actors than could fit into the end-screen credits. The foreword to his new book Moments of Truth: My life with Acting (by Bloomsbury) is written by Shabana Azmi and Tom Alter. Anil Kapoor, Aamir Khan, Naseeruddin Shah, Gulshan Grover, Jaya Bhaduri, Tina Munim, Shatrughan Sinha, Danny Denzongpa have all studied under him – either at the Film Institute of India in Pune, or at the Roshan Taneja School of Acting in Mumbai.

The hunger for acting credentials led him to New York City's The Neighbourhood Playhouse School of Theatre, which in the first year, had only nine students. Taneja was there on a full scholarship for two years and a stipend. In many ways, he is still there.

To Taneja, the embodiment of method acting – the discipline he schooled in and brought to India – is Marlon Brando. "We have good actors, not great ones. Naseer is also good. In his plays. We don't have great actors because we don't have great scripts. Where are the scripts?" he says sitting in the office above his school in Mumbai. In his early 80s now, Taneja slips into an American twang when he talks of his NYC years. The newer batch of Anurag Kashyaps, Dibakar Banerjees and Imtiaz Alis intrigue him, but he hasn't been to a movie for a while, in part because of his age.

About 10-15 years ago, he developed a uniform – a sleeveless jacket and a scarf around his neck. It's the only distinguishing aspect of an otherwise calm, small man. Until you are the subject of his piercing eyes.

Taneja returned to India after his education, armed with formal training, but the only role available were as a character artiste. "People then believed that actors could only be born, not made," he says. "I would 'Yes! Acting talent is god's gift, but training helps you cultivate and hone it. "My official training in acting made people either curious or dismissive," he goes on. "Someone once told Meena Kumari what I had studied, and she insisted we do a scene together. Method acting is pitched on the theory of finding your personal truth. Every human has every emotion, every human trait within him or her. Society doesn't let you express the negative ones; acting does. So when you are playing a character, you have to find that character within you."

He suggested they re-do the scene with improvisation from her movie Sahib, Bibi aur Ghulam, where the husband (Rehman) is leaving to spend an evening with a courtesan and Chhoti Bahu (Meena Kumari) begs him to spend the evening with her. "Meena-ji said 'But how can we enact this? Where are the lines?' I told her there are no written dialogues in Improv and she would just have to say what she thought the character would say. As she got deeper into it scene, her language became very crude. She herself was shocked at how and how much she debased herself. I told her this is what method acting is."

A few years of doddering around doing bit parts, and Taneja got ushered into a new role, seemingly tailor-made for him. The Film Institute of India, in 1963, was opening an acting department and director, producer Mahesh Kaul suggested he apply for the post of an acting professor. "My friends in NYC had once told me, 'Raushan (sic), you could teach acting in India'. I had gotten very angry at him and said, 'Never, ever say that to me again.' But see how destiny works? P.D Shenoy was supposed to join as the head of the department and I was going to be an assistant professor of acting with a princely salary of of Rs 590. But he never showed up. I thought Pune was close enough to Mumbai for me to teach and still try to find acting jobs. But I slowly discovered I loved teaching acting. It turned me on! Going to class, setting up scenarios for student to improvise! I never knew when the acting bug went away!"

There, he mid-wived the birth of so many actors-- the first wave of Jaya Bhaduri, Subhash Ghai, Om Puri and Asrani cemented the institute's reputation as an institution of worth. "There were some who would walk into a room and I knew they had it in them – like Danny," he says. "He had such unconventional looks for the time. I always knew which of my students would make it; I just couldn't tell when."

In 1976, he moved back to Bombay, as the government decided to grant an Autonomous status to as FTI and began his classes, slowly consolidating into an acting school – first called Studio and later, the Roshan Taneja School of Acting. There he birthed a new generation of actors, and later their children Anil Kapoor and then Sonam and Ranbir Kapoor. On break from his studies in Boston, Abhishek Bachchan took private classes from on the suggestion of his mother. Sunny Deol sent his brother Bobby and Twinkle Khanna to him before their debut in Barsaat, as did Karisma Kapoor. Mahesh Bhatt enrolled Pooja Bhatt, and later Emraan Hashmi. Ram Mukherjee and his wife Krishna, worried about their daughter Rani's future, enrolled her too.

So what does it take to be a good actor? "Concentration, focus, the capacity to listen and react authentically. You don't act, you do." Simple advice, really.