I want stardom, and I work only to be a star, says Vijay Sethupathi

HE is loved by the audience and practically everyone he meets. Tamil asterisk Vijay Sethupathi has no pose almost him, takes selfies with everyone, says a sort word or ii and ensures his fans are happy. As he sits down to chat with Hindustan Times after clicking pics with fans, he says how grateful he is for all the love he receives from them wherever he goes. (Also Read: Vijay Sethupathi reveals Anurag Kashyap shot climax of Maharaja despite serious injury: ‘He crawled on one hand…’)“The least I can do for my fans is take a selfie. What else am I going to do for them in life?” Vijay asks as he opens up about his Tamil film Ace, releasing on 23 May. The film also features Kannada actor Rukmini Vasanth, who is making her Tamil debut, and is directed by Arumuga Kumar. Here are excerpts from the conversation.Director Arumuga Kumar gave you your first break in films. You worked with him in 2018 on Oru Nalla Naal Paathu Solren. Why did it take you six years to work with him again?We did have conversations in between and discussed around seven or eight ideas, but Ace is the story which finally clicked for me. He executed Laambam for me in 2021. Ace is a love story, crime and action film that takes place over three weeks. The protagonist has a major past, but he gives it all up to create a new identity for himself and lead a new life. But unfortunately, life presents a situation – love and the people he loves - where he has to become the old one once again. Since Yogi Babu is also part of the film, it’ll also be an entertaining, fun film to watch. My friends who saw the movie liked it, and we hope the audience will like it too. (Smiles)You’ve said that bringing the physicality to a role is as important as the way you say your dialogue. Do you bring that to every single role, no matter what?I try to achieve that for every single role, but I’m not sure how much I succeed. For every film and character, there will be a hook. The characteristics of the person, the personality, his psyche – I delve into this to understand the character completely. I have a lot of discussions with the director to understand what his vision is for the character – that’s important for me.So, as a romantic hero, what are the nuances you’ve brought to your role as Bold Kannan in Ace?It’s about love and how the two—Bold Kannan and Rukku (Rukmini Vasanth)—fall in love and experience it. It's about how these two souls perceive love. From friendship, it moves to love; the way they handle situations and conflicts—everything is different. Love is a universal language, but how the two people in that relationship view love and life defines that love, in my opinion.Are you a romantic person in real life? How do you define romance/love?Yes, I hope I am a romantic person. (Smiles). I think love is madness. You tell the other person I’ll do anything for you, do crazy things, fight, be emotional and apologise. I don’t think we do all this with anyone else in life other than the one we love. There are no rules in love. If this happened with anyone else, we’d move away from them, but not with the person you’re in love with. No matter how much you fight, the next second you long for that person and come back. I’ve done a lot of crazy things in love. (Laughs)You’ve done really diverse, successful films, but you’ve also had some films that failed, like Junga.I liked Junga. I’ll blame myself for the failure of that film – maybe I didn’t act convincingly enough in that film, and it didn’t reach the audience. When we listen to a story and like it, we believe it’ll be made in a way that it reaches and engages the audience as it did us when the script is narrated. This is the same process we follow for every film, but sometimes there can be a miscalculation, and it backfires. Then people perceive it as a ‘bad film’. We believe every film will work – after all, every film is trial and error. Feedback from the audiences and critics helps us improve constantly. For instance, I had an acting coach for some time. Then I decided to take on villain roles. Many people told me not to do villain roles as it would affect my career – why should I fear this? If I had fear, a middle-class boy like me would not have ventured into cinema. It’s courage that made me come into films, and I can’t be in a ‘safe’ zone all the time, where acting is concerned.Sometimes I feel you see yourself as an actor rather than a star.No, I see myself as a star – the way I approach cinema is probably different. The way you perceive who a star is and the way I perceive who a star is are different. I believe I’m a star because I can bring the audience to theatres, engage them, act convincingly, entertain them and make an impact with the story being told. For me, commercial cinema is not about those mass appeal elements but about ensuring we recover the money invested in making the film. The film should give the audience highs within the story being told and through my performance. I look for this in every film. And we don’t need to follow the same format for every film either to succeed. This is what I’ve been trying to do – I want stardom, and I want to be a star, and I want to work to remain a star.