There were many inspiring qualities of customs officer Costao Fernandes that compelled Nawazuddin Siddiqui to come aboard his biopic. But what got him more excited was the way Fernandes laughed. “He laughs a lot, but there’s still something hidden behind his laughter. That was very interesting to explore,” Siddiqui tells us. The Zee5 biopic drama, directed by Sejal Shah, follows a gold smuggling case that Fernandes fought against in the 1990s. Siddiqui was awed by the officer’s courage and moved by his suffering when standing against a corrupt system. Costao is an addition to his 26-year glorious filmography as an actor. As we remind him of the number of years he has been in the industry, he smiles and says, “The more I am experienced, the more I am scared thinking about acting because there are so many things to be explored. There could be 1,000 ways to perform a scene and the process of finding them is what I feel is interesting.”

Last month, at the Chandigarh Film Festival, Siddiqui had spoken about how he used to be annoyed at being called “unconventionally looking”. Even his NSD (National School of Drama) batchmate, lyricist Swanand Kirkire, in an interview, mentioned how the industry was cruel to him as he didn’t fit their definition of a hero. Does the actor consider it the industry’s failure that it doesn’t trust actors who don’t fit its stereotype of how a hero should look?