Yami Gautam: Playing challenging characters is essential to evolve and grow as an artiste – Exclusive
Yami Gautam
In the overthetop film LOST, Yami Gautam portrays a crime journalist. Yami is playing a journalist for the first time. As Yami puts it, “I don’t think I have played a journalist in my life, but even if I had, I would have always focusssed on how can it be different from the existing roles I have essayed.”
For Yami, there’s often more than one appropriate way to play a given role. She says this about acting in professional roles in particular: “The real world could have only so many reporters, or workers of any given kind. Professions range widely in scope and complexity. Each of us has our own unique qualities. Acting is an art form that lets you appreciate these other fields of work. For this reason, I find this persona to be quite distinct from my earlier ones.”
She has portrayed blind characters, Indian air force pilots, educators, and police officers. She enjoys acting because of the many different roles she gets to play. What Yami has to say about it “I’ve played a wide variety of roles, but none like my current LOST character, Vidhi. Each of my films—beginning with Vicky Donor and continuing on through Kaabil, URI, Bala, A Thursday, and Dasvi—has featured a cast of wildly different characters. As an actor, playing a variety of roles is the best way to test your mettle and develop your craft.”
Yami has this to say about accepting new challenges and playing different characters: “One must venture into unknown territories and spaces, learning as one goes. Whenever you get the chance to portray a new character, you should take the opportunity to work with a new director and bring your A game.”
The theme of LOST, in which Yami plays an investigator, is choosing what is right over what is true. Tomorrow, the film will premiere on Zee5.
