‘Satisfied with my career’

Sheetal

I am very much the definition of an outsider,’says actor and aspiring musician Alexx ONell, who was last seen in the web series Aarya, on being asked about the current ‘insider and outsider’ debate raging after Sushant Singh Rajput’s suicide.

“From the day I started my career as an actor in India, I was always cast as an outsider, a foreigner in the story line. Having said that, it’s not that I am offended by it but rather enjoy playing each role that I have been given. Roles are written for you. Aarya could easily not have Bob’s character; in the same way, my upcoming movie Roohi Afzana could easily not have a role for me,” he adds.

No repetitions

At the same time, Alexx, who played Bob in Sushmita Sen-starrer web series Aarya, says, “An actor always has a choice of being typecast. I consciously worked less to avoid repetitive roles. I had done Jhansi Ki Rani for television and refused to repeat the roles when the films were made about it. I have done three to four projects a year; it could have been much more had I not been selective. I am satisfied with my career graph and take pride in having worked in six different languages, having done 35 feature films in my 13-year-long career.”

Musical vein

A liking for music, which he never took seriously until this year, led him to release a song, Still On My Mind, which features Shama Sikander, a month before Aarya. “I love working on rock music,” he says. Ask him to choose between acting and music, and he quips, “I can answer it this way; there is a role on my bucket list, to play a musician in a movie. I loved Rockstar and would love to do a movie like that.”

In his upcoming movies, apart from Roohi Afzana, there is Golondaaj, his third Bengali project, with superstar Dev Adhikari. As the lockdown gave him breathing space to work on the kind of music he wishes to promote, he will soon be releasing his next song titled 20 days. Currently in Netherlands spending time with his mother, he says, “It has been the longest that I have spent in the country since birth. On the personal front, I am enjoying my time with my mother. She is 75 years old and I think it is important to be with her.”