Sushant Singh Rajput goes from 1940s to 2050

For Sushant Singh Rajput, it is time for leap of generations that could fracture any actor's performing abilities.

But Sushant, who with just three films, has prepared a roster of character-portraits rather than star-vehicles for his career, is all set to make a 110-year journey in the course of two films.

While in Dibakar Banerjee's Detective Byomkesh Bakshy, Sushant Singh Rajput plays a detective in Kolkata in the 1940s, in Shekhar Kapoor's Paani, he is cast as a ghetto-boy from Mumbai in the year 2050.

The cultural and chronological leap is tremendous. And Sushant is revelling in every bit of the challenge.

Says Sushant, "I'm ready to make a 110-year leap from my last film to the next. In Detective Byomkesh Bakshy though, I had to go back in time to the 1940s, I had solid reference points. I watched a lot of films from that era. Then of course Dibakar was there to guide me. With Paani, there are no reference points. I've the freedom to interpret my character in any way I like. In the rehearsals and workshops, Shekhar Kapoor has allowed me complete freedom to do what I like with the character. Such supreme freedom is also a kind of captivity, as you tend to go overboard. With Shekhar's help, I am trying to make my character in Paani believable."

About his very unorthodox selection of roles...as an aspiring cricketer in his large-screen debut in Kai Po Che, a horny wastrel in Shuddh Desi Romance, a 1940s' detective in Detective Byomkesh Bakshyand a ghetto-Romeo in futuristic Mumbai in Paani, Sushant says the irregular is the regular for him. "I don't think I'd be comfortable playing the typical lover-boy romancing pretty girls in designer clothes. I would die if I've to play stereotypical characters. I may fail with some of my unconventional choices.