Pankaj Tripathi: Earlier I would feel bad that people didn’t know my name, but only my characters

He has come a long way from being just another face on screen, to actually leading entire films on his shoulders. But Pankaj Tripathi confesses that being recognized only as his characters wasn’t always something to be happy about.

“If today people call me by my characters’ names, I like it more. In the beginning however, around six-seven years ago, I would feel bad that people don’t know my name. They would say ‘aap actor ho, uss film mein Sultan ka role kiya tha’ I would always wish they knew my name. And today, everyone knows my name but they love my characters so much that they deliberately call me by those names,” says the 45-year-old, who recently shot for Fukrey 3.

He calls this his biggest achievement to date. Now that he has an established fan base, there must be a lot of crazy fan encounters too. Tripathi recalls, “There’s a fan who plans trees on the occasion of my birthday every year. Then there was another one who I encountered while shooting in Delhi for Fukrey 3. He was shouting for two-three hours about how big a fan he is. But we aren’t allowed to get pictures clicked while we are in in the character’s costume, in case the look gets leaked. I later got a handwritten note delivered to him.”

The actor feels bad whenever someone waits to meet him. “Bura lagta hai jab uske baad bhi tasveer nahi khincha sakta. I am astounded that from an eight year old child to a senior citizen, I have a fan in every age group,” gushes Tripathi.

With everything going in his favour, what’s his biggest struggle today, if there is any? He says it is the weight of expectations he now feels he is under, “Logon ki ummeedein badh gayi hain, uss trust ko barkaraar rakhun. People tell me they listen to me, they go on YouTube to watch my interviews. Itna sammaan hai, emotional ho jaata hoon.”