The young and charming Suraj Sharma won the hearts of many with his roles in Life of Pi and Million Dollar Arm. Currently pursuing film studies at Tisch, New York University, his audition for Life of Pi was in fact the first of many exciting experiences in his life including the chance to feature in the very popular TV series, Homeland. The young actor shares his excitement over the role and how he got there in the first place.
Suraj’s role in the series is no far cry from his previous roles; it is all about how he mentally copes with the situations he comes across. “It is a weird state of mind to portray where danger becomes so constant and general and somewhere, because of the media, it’s made higher than the real ground level situation,” explains Suraj.
He elaborates on the significance of the role, “Everyone knows that movies are coming down and TV’s coming up, that’s where the future is. In that sense obviously it’s helping me. I’m an actor who doesn’t really have training. So doing these different templates of things like TV, Homeland specifically, versus something like Million Dollar Arm, Life of Pi, they’re all so different that it’s pretty much the only way I can get trained. So it’s helping me, I’m growing as an actor, knowing that you don’t know what’s going to come next and pushing on that, it helps you realise what it’s like to be in the moment.”
Also he says the thrill of acting in a TV series lies in not knowing what is going to happen next. “Things are shot fast, it’s continuously developing. When you read a script of a movie you know what’s going to happen at the end; I have no idea. Being alive in that situation and not knowing what’s going to happen, though it might in some ways seem easier because your character doesn’t know either, it’s a strange thing to kind of cope with because at some level you are there. You don’t know what’s coming at you, so you’re continuously active.”
Suraj confesses that working with Ang Lee set him up for the good things that have come his way, “I definitely got very lucky. That one thing set me up for a lot of things and helped me and brought me somewhere I would not have been, that’s for sure. But it’s not like something is written in stone for me. It isn’t. I’m not even appearance-wise a would-be Indian actor, I’m not, I’m aware of that. With Hollywood, the number of roles you get as an Indian actor which are not stereotypical? Very small. So I need to be aware of these things, and I can’t get ahead of myself like that. I’m just going with what’s happening,” he says and bids adieu.
