Early on as a struggling actor in Mumbai, Tisca Chopra turned up excitedly at an audition with what she thought was her ticket to coveted roles — portfolio pictures in coloured contact lenses and tacky make-up. “Are those tests shots for a fantasy film?” the casting director asked with a smirk.

Two decades on, Chopra is older and wiser. From being rejected for having ‘too big a face’ to being asked to audition in a swimsuit for a B-grade movie, she has seen some dark days. Her book Acting Smart , published by HarperCollins, records such instances for the benefit of other starry-eyed aspirants hoping to make it big in showbiz.

“You need to be sharp and smart. I was sharp and bright in a way. I was academically inclined, but not street-smart. The book is a desire to protect aspiring actors from the heartbreak I went through. I made a huge number of mistakes,” she says, stressing on the ‘huge’.

Writing books is par for the course in Chopra’s family — her parents have a few between them, her pilot husband Capt Sanjay Chopra has a book of short stories to his credit and the most illustrious of them all is her grand-uncle, the late Khushwant Singh. Perhaps that explains why she confidently agreed to wrap up the book in just three months. However, she ended up taking four long years. “This is classic me, totally misunderstanding the situation. This is how I proceed with life till I get wiser,” she says over a bland breakfast of egg whites and brown bread.

Chopra lives in the Lokhandwala area, a hunting ground for new talent. Hundreds turn up each day to try their luck at the numerous casting agencies in the neighbourhood, film scripts get written at the coffee shops and six-pack bodies are sculpted at the gyms here. It is at her gym that Chopra gets to interact with many of her readers. “I really like you and I really understand you. If you’re down, this book puts a cracker up your bum,” a young aspiring actress told Chopra mid-workout.

Chopra’s book doesn’t tell you how to become a star. It’s a practical guide to becoming a working actor, no matter how small the part. She worries that freak instances, such as actress Kangna Ranaut getting spotted at a coffee shop or Preity Zinta getting her first break when she accompanied a friend to an audition, have deluded millions into believing they could be next in line. Stories of actors who steadily worked their way up with grit and determination don’t excite them much. “People like to promulgate that fairytale myth. I know of actors who are pushing the envelope, even breaking it open, and there’s a lot of hard work that goes into that. But they like to say that life just shined upon them and yada yada yada. No one likes to visit the dark alleys of their life,” she says.

At 17, Chopra landed her maiden Hindi film, Platform (1993), starring Ajay Devgn. It was a disaster, as were a couple of other films that followed. Next she worked on a lot of ad films, television shows and theatre. She shot back into public consciousness with Aamir Khan’s Taare Zameen Par in 2007. “I was completely clueless. I turned down some big projects on a whim. I kept thinking something bigger will come my way,” she says. If it wasn’t for some prodding by the TZP casting team, she would have missed that chance too. “The first time I was called, I didn’t go. I thought it is better to not go for an Aamir Khan audition than to say ‘I went and didn’t get it’,” she explains. Her next release, Qissa , starring Irrfan Khan, has won acclaim at several foreign film festivals. And she is already writing her own film.

Recalling two of the “abysmal” films she did in her 20s, Chopra says she was lucky to have veteran actor Naseeruddin Shah as her on-screen father in them. She pestered Shah to come good on his promise to hold acting workshops for working actors. They attended regular classes at his home and farm. Chopra found she could immediately apply her newfound knowledge in the TV shows she was doing then. “He would feed us great food, give us goodies and not charge a penny. But yeah, if you get fired by him, you can crash into an abyss of depression,” she warns.

Another memory from those initial days was a film she did with Anil Kapoor, whom she remembers as kind and helpful. Years later, when he came to watch her successful play Dinner with Friends , he was impressed by her transformation. “ Tu kamal hai yaar, tu kaise karti hain (You are amazing, how did you pull off this change),” she recalls him telling her after the curtain call. Last year, when Kapoor was casting for his TV show 24 , he called up Chopra to play his wife. “I think he was impressed that I didn’t give up. I kept working,” she says.

That’s the advice she gives her readers too — to keep going. Despite all her disappointments, Chopra’s book is remarkably positive. A Buddhist by preference, her beliefs are simple: “Take whatever’s coming and excel at that. If you’re good and well-behaved, then even if you have a two-line part, the same guys will offer you five the next time. If you get negative and jaded, creativity won’t come close to you.”

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