Jimi Mistry

A familiar face to the many millions who never miss an episode of Eastenders, Jimi Mistry – one of a host of talented actors to debut in the award-winning 1999 hit East Is East – now seems destined to raise his public profile massively. Having registered further critical acclaim with The Mystic Masseur and David Kane’s Born Romantic, Mistry is now about to go global with The Guru, an offbeat and breezy Bollywood-goes-to-Hollywood comedy/musical, starring the likeable Anglo-Indian star as an immigrant in the US whose unwitting audition for a porn movie (with Heather Graham as a muse and co-star) leads to his wider adaption among New York yuppies, as a sex guru pitched halfway between the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and the Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh.

While Asian culture in Britain generally has long been the convenient target of low-grade racist Workingmen’s Club humour, The Guru is further evidence of the new ‘Bollywood cool’ sweeping the planet. It’s a trend which Jimi – the son of a Hindi-Indian doctor and an Irish Catholic mother – wholeheartedly welcomes.

Hot Press caught up with Mr Mistry just prior to the premiere of The Guru on this side of the Atlantic.

The Guru is your first Hollywood gig – is that a huge thing for you?

Opportunity came knocking alright! It’s really weird though because I don’t have a massive career plan. To be honest I don’t think you can afford to in this business. You have to almost be prepared to not work some of the time, in the hope that something like The Guru comes along. But making Hollywood movies wasn’t really one of my major aspirations – all I care about is whether the character interests me and whether it’s a good project.

But the impact of getting the role must have been massive?

Oh yes. And the thing was that at the time I was away in Trinidad shooting The Mystic Masseur. Then I got The Guru. My partner was seven months pregnant and we suddenly made the decision to get married but there was only one day free between jobs. I literally got back from work that night to find my suit pressed and the next day I got up, got dressed, and got married! Six weeks later we had our first child in New York. It was amazing.

How did working in the States differ from working on this side of the Atlantic?

Well, over there everything is so big. The food is over-the-top. The cars are over-the-top. Even the buildings are over-the-top. Everything is on a massive scale. And so are the movies. So you’re constantly being watched. You don’t go around the corner without an assistant director going ‘Jimi Mistry is going to get a newspaper, Jimi Mistry is going to the loo...’.

Were there parallels between you and his character then?

Yeah, I did feel a bit like a fish out of water in New York, but going to India was even more of a culture shock – it was the first time I’d ever been there. We went right at the end of filming and, in the some ways, I wish I’d gone there before we’d gone to New York so that I would’ve known where my character was coming from.

As your mum is a Catholic from Northern Ireland and your dad is Indian-Hindi, how would you describe your own upbringing?

It was very British. I was brought up in Manchester, Cardiff and Scarborough, always moving around a lot, but my background was always very integrated, my parents always took the attitude that I had to find out who I was for myself. Although she made sure I was brought up a strong Catholic. I was an altar boy and in a folk group, so it was sort of the polar opposite of the situation you had in East Is East. My father took more of a back seat. I always felt fairly privileged having all these cultures around me.

As an Anglo-Indian, how do you feel about the current Bollywood chic?

I think it’s fantastic, the way those perceptions have changed so quickly can only be good. This film is a good crossover from Indian culture to Hollywood culture. And it’s been coming for a while now, what with there being more Indian subjects in films. Bollywood is establishing itself strongly now, so I think The Guru has come at the right time. As far as Asian culture is concerned, it is extremely colourful, it revolves a lot around fun, and the great thing is that it’s been established at last. For so many years, thinking of Mind Your Language (’70s TV sitcom) and so on, there was always a sense that you were laughing at these people rather than with them.’

Were you worried about that kind of stereotyping when you took on The Guru?

Definitely. There’s a very fine line with Ramu, where you’ve got an American setting with an Indian lead character in a fish-out-of-water scenario, and what you really don’t want to do is go back to the days where everything is ‘let’s laugh at the funny guy with the silly accent’. The film’s funny for other reasons.

Do you find the kind of physical comedic acting required for the role a challenge?

It’s just part of my nature to have fun. If we were here with a bunch of friends and got pissed I’d definitely be the sort of character that’d get loud and merry and put the stereo on. So with The Guru, it was great to be able to use physical comedy as a medium. Not that the entire film depended on me, but I pinpointed from the start that it was a film where the main character has to work, even more so than usual, otherwise the entire film would fall apart. So, it’s lucky that I’ve always liked to strut my stuff!

Does that explain your stint in a dodgy thrash band?

Yeah, well even as a kid, I wasn’t afraid of performing, I always wanted to have a good time and I’m good for a laugh. I don’t take myself seriously enough to think, ‘OK, Mr. Mistry will see you now’ – I do it to take the piss out of myself more than anything else. So naturally enough, I went around for a couple of years screaming thrash metal and it was great at the time. I always had to have some sort of release, and it changes, so thank God I found acting. But I came late on to acting really. I was seventeen before I took any kind of interest.

And how about all the comedy porn stuff in the film with co-star Heather Graham. It can’t have been that comfortable?

Well, no it wasn’t because I did have to wear this G-string, pouch thing a lot. It’s small because you have to look as if you are wearing nothing from behind. Me and Heather had some quite intimate stuff to do in the film, and she’s a lovely girl, she’s a gorgeous girl. But it’s like that line in the film, it’s hard with fifty people sitting around drinking coffee: when you’re in that setting you have to be very fearless. The movie demanded that in a lot of ways: if I had to take my towels off or whatever, if for a second I worried about people seeing my arse, the film wasn’t going to work. So I had to had to keep my energy level and my commitment level high. And if you notice, I have to take my clothes off more than Heather! The people on the set were all going, ‘Oh God. Not Jimi’s arse again!’.

Now that you look set to conquer the US, what’s next?

Well, I’m in this weird situation. Like everyone else, my ambition as an actor is to do interesting characters. Now in order for me, as an actor who’s generally perceived as an Asian or mixed-race actor, that’s very difficult because there simply isn’t the work around, so my ambition is to try and break that, to be respected for me and not for where I’m from. And there’s not much precedent for that. Wherever the breaks arrive, in TV or film or whatever, I hope it’s because I can bring something to the part and not because I come from a certain background.

Is it the case then that the film industry remains somewhat racist?

There is an implicit racism in film and TV; it’s hard to get interesting work because of producers’ attitudes. What gets me is that I will only get seen for a part because they’ll be saying to themselves, ‘Jimi is a good Asian actor’. For me, there’s a completely unnecessary word in there. Maybe I am making too much of an issue of it, but there are parts I refuse. When I started, I kept getting scripts for characters called Ali and parts like that, and I thought, ‘What is this?’. I’m trying to get interesting work and I don’t want my background or race to be an issue. I know that there are other actors my age who will get parts that I never even get to look at because I don’t fit the picture. I mean, with my friends I was never the ‘Asian mate’. I was always just Jimi. I only got labelled when I got into acting.

What are your memories of East Is East?

It was just a huge thing for me. And it was a breakthrough for a lot of people. I can only hope that this film will help break as many people through.

Do you look back fondly on your year as resident (and undoubtedly much put upon) doctor in Eastenders?

Yeah, I look back – I learnt a lot, I was there for three years and a lot has happened, I learnt a lot about myself and about the business, and I have to say that job scared me a lot. Because I had no idea, I just wasn’t prepared for everything that comes with it, it was huger than I could have begun to realise. All of a sudden you’re recognised by lots of people in the street. I think of EastEnders as equivalent to signing for Man. United, ‘cause the beast is so big. And for me, it took over the actual work that I was doing.

Getting stopped in the supermarket isn’t your idea of fun then?

No. In the case of Eastenders that kind of thing took a lot of the fun out of it. I never got into this line of work for the glamour or the fame or the money. It was the last resort to make up for the heartbreak of not making it as a professional footballer! Even still, the only thing that I literally dream about is playing for Liverpool, and every so often I get these lucid dreams about scoring goals for them, which are absolutely amazing, and you feel fantastic when you wake up.

I know your appreciation of your Indian background doesn’t extend to Hindu rituals or transcendental meditation, but do you have your own personal guru?

I always think I’m a very spiritual person, I believe in karma in the sense that what you do to others always comes back for good or bad. As far as gurus, we all have people that we follow in life, we’ll always have people that we seek guidance and advice and enlightenment from. I am spiritual about football, specifically Liverpool FC, and my guru is Alan Hansen. With Mark Lawrenson as well, they were and are my gurus.