We have been hearing that the filmmakers choose the stars because they fit to the characters. But this proves to be wrong. They star the actors (many a time) upon the market
value. This happened on the project of the filmmaker Sudhir Mishra, who is making his Devdas. He hired Shiney Ahuja as Devdas along with Lara Dutta and Chitrangda Singh. But later found that Shiney is not the actor, the film can sell in the market. So finally throw him out of the cast and instead took Farhan Akhtar as Devdas.

Since they started shooting from 1 April, the unit of Excel Entertainment's Karthik Calling Karthik has traveled to three different places.

Excel Entertainment head honcho Ritesh Sidhwani says, "Since the film was planned with a start to finish schedule, we have been on the move. We started in Mumbai, then shifted base to Lonavala for a few days. We shot in Cochin and now we are back in Mumbai. The shooting for the film will be complete by the first week of June."

Apart from singing, acting, directing and hosting television shows the versatile Farhan Akhtar also does his bit for a good cause. Farhan launched an innovative campaign to build a school for differently able children in Mumbai.

The actor filmmaker made an appearance to support Sadhna School's 'Brick By Brick' campaign on Saturday evening. This drive is to build additional floors of the school for differently able children - by sponsoring bricks which comes for Rs 5,000 apiece.

"The first thing I can do to help is to buy a number of bricks myself," said Farhan.

  

Tuesday evening saw actor, singer, filmmaker Farhan Akhtar meet a few lucky fans and winners of a contest at a multiplex in Mumbai. The multi-talented Farhan will now also be trying his hand at theatre with sister Zoya. They will be participating in the in the all-woman show The Vagina Monologues to be held in Mumbai on Wednesday.

"There is a two-part poem and I am doing one part of it and Zoya is doing the other part," says he.

Farhan - who now has two successful films behind him as an actor - is also planning to return to the director's chair with Don 2, a sequel to his last film starring Shah Rukh Khan. And no Farhan doesn't believe in acting in his own films.

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The opening scene of director Zoya Akhtar's Luck By Chance sets the mood for the two-and-half hours or so that follow. In this scene Konkona Sensharma who stars as a struggling actress finds herself being indirectly and indecently propositioned by a sleazy film producer. It's a humorous scene because the casting couch is one of Bollywood's oldest clichés and because Aly Khan who plays the producer in question, performs that scene remarkably, giving her just the kind of smarmy lines you know you should never believe. But that scene is also dark and disturbing at the same time, especially when the camera stays on Konkona's uncomfortable expression in the end. You realise she wants the job so bad, she's going to accept his advances knowing fully well she's doing something wrong.

Luck, they say, is an important factor in the film industry. But talent is equally important. Thoughtfully, Zoya Akhtar doesn’t rely on plain chance in her directorial debut but exhibits immense aptitude while largely highlighting the significance of fate in films.

Luck By Chance is the story of an aspiring actor Vikram (Farhan Akhtar) who comes from Delhi to Mumbai to make it big in films. Sona Mishra (Konkona Sen Sharma) has been struggling for more than a couple of years in B-grade cinema and wants to switch to more meaty roles.

Meanwhile film producer Rommy Rolly (Rishi Kapoor) announces a new project starring popular film-star Zafar Khan (Hrithik Roshan) alongside Nikki (Isha Sharvani), daughter of yesteryear actress Neena Walia (Dimple Kapadia).

He wowed audiences and critics alike with his debut performance in the blockbuster Rock On!!. Farhan Akhtar took his first role and showed that not only can he act and portray the character with true depth but he can also sing! His next film, releasing this Friday, is Zoya Akhtar’s Luck By Chance. In the film he plays a struggling actor in the Hindi film Industry and it was quite a challenging role for the actor. Farhan recently talked to Aly about the film, working with Koko and his take on Luck! So sit back, relax and read the exciting interview we got by Chance!

It’s actually quite difficult to come up with questions for you because you wear so many caps in the industry - you’re an actor, director and producer. So how do you balance these three careers and how do you decide which takes priority?

Well, as far as production goes I have a partner in the company whose name is Ritesh Sidhwani, and he is really the one who deals with all the production issues. So my involvement, really, is not a day-to-day involvement that is hands on. It’s mainly handled by him. As far as the other aspects go, whether it’s acting or directing, it’s really a case of time management and not doing both of them simultaneously. You know, making sure that I have adequate time to prepare for each job when it’s been scheduled to happen. So it’s really a question of time management.