Gulshan Devaiah recalls weeping over Irrfan Khan's death, calls him a huge influence

Gulshan Devaiah says the late Irrfan Khan was a huge influence on his acting, and that he wept on the phone with his mother when news of Irrfan's death broke.

"Absolutely, both consciously and subconsciously," Gulshan said when asked whether Irrfan had shaped his work. He never went to drama school, so he learned the craft by watching great performers. He was careful not to imitate any of them, and he named Irrfan, Manoj Bajpayee, Daniel Day-Lewis, Robert De Niro and Kate Winslet among them.

What stood out to him was how unpredictable Irrfan was. Gulshan said you never knew what Irrfan would do next, and often he did very little, holding back while his big eyes kept the audience locked on him. At times he spoke his lines without even looking at his co-actor. Irrfan did not have the conventional looks of Hrithik Roshan, Shah Rukh Khan or Salman Khan, Gulshan said, "but somehow he would draw attention."

How deep that bond ran surprised even him. "I was talking to my mother and weeping, and my mother was like 'I didn't know you liked him so much', and I was like, 'Yeah, neither did I,'" he recalled. He called Irrfan a one-of-a-kind actor whose death felt personal to millions, like losing a member of the family.

Next up for him is Little Thomas, directed by Kaushal Oza. The film follows a curious young boy who badly wants a sibling, and it reaches theatres on October 23.