The Oscar-sweeping Slumdog Millionaire has
made Hollywood take notice of Bollywood like it never did in the past.
Despite making cash registers ring both at home and among the Indian
diaspora abroad, few Indian actors have made it to the top ladders of
Hollywood or Western cinema. But that is to change now.
Compiled/Written by Swati Bajpai
The highly renowned and prestigious Lee Strasberg Theater and Film
Institute is opening its branches in the Indian entertainment capital
Mumbai and media-savvy Hyderabad.
Lee Strasberg, Oscar-nominated for his role as Jewish mobster
Hyman Roth in The Godfather, Part II, set up a school for performing
arts in 1969 after years of involvement with the Actors Studio in New
York. His teaching revolutionized actor training in the United States
and inspired many of Hollywood’s major names from James Dean to Al
Pacino and Robert De Niro through to Julia Roberts and Scarlett
Johansson.
Rahul Rawail, director of movies like Betaab, Arjun Pandit, and
Bekhudi, is the chief executive of the institute’s Indian division. The
institutes in India will follow the method acting regimen (the use of
emotions and actions from an actor’s own life in the character he or
she plays) that makes the Lee Strasberg Institute unique, and also
offer courses in directing, cinematography, sound and editing. Courses
range from 18 months to intensive six-to-12-week sessions, where
aspiring actors could be joined by more established names in the
business.
The development comes at a time of keen interest in Indian
filmmaking that was growing even before Slumdog Millionaire swept this
year’s Oscars. Last week, Twentieth Century Fox announced a global
distribution deal for top Bollywood star Shahrukh Khan’s upcoming movie
My Name Is Khan, the first time it is to finance and market a
mainstream Bollywood movie worldwide.
An increasing number of Hollywood studios and companies are forging
joint ventures with Indian movie houses, hoping to tap into a $
2.2-billion market that is expected to grow at nearly 12 percent every
year until 2013.