Kambakkht MCP

Actor Akshay Kumar with Ken Naz. President, Eros International, at a press conference in New York to promote Kambakkht Ishq

NEW YORK: “If men are from Mars,” says Bollywood superstar Akshay Kumar, “women are from heaven!” The slight variation on the old adage comes from the actor who plays, as he himself puts it, a “male chauvinist pig” in his latest release Kambakkht Ishq that released in theaters worldwide on July 3.

Akshay Kumar reveals his real self

Akshay, who was vacationing with his family in Puerto Rico, flew down to New York last week specially to promote the film for Eros International that’s distributing it worldwide.
Addressing an audience at the Park Central Hotel in Midtown Manhattan, that comprised more fans than the media, Akshay said at the very outset, “Kambakkht Ishq is a fun and entertaining movie you can watch with your family. It’s a typical Bollywood movie, so don’t think about logic… leave your brains at home when you go to the theater!”

More elaborately, he said, it was a perfect Indian ‘Mr. and Mrs. Smith’ kind of film. “It’s a good Indian story about the battle of the sexes. The Hollywood aspect was a requirement of the script and not forced.”

The character he portrays in Kambaakkht Ishq does not however, take away from Akshay’s personal belief that women are stronger and more capable than men in many aspects. “I don’t identify myself with this character at all,” he says “I believe that women are much stronger. I live with my mom, sister, wife, niece, and get to work with beautiful women in the movies… I am surrounded by women all the time and I admire them. I do believe that men are from Mars and women are from heaven.”

Akshay plays a Hollywood stuntman with scant respect for marriage as an institution and Kareena Kapoor plays a super model who does not believe in love -- that is until they fall in love with each other.

Shot extensively at Hollywood’s Universal Studios, Kambakkht Ishq boasts of being the first Indian film to have an impressive Hollywood cast of actors Sylvester Stallone, Denise Richards and Brandon Routh.

Akshay said he believes it’s always good to bring different cultures together and the success of the Kambakht Ishq would pretty much determine future Hollywood collaborations for Bollywood. “If this film goes well there might be more collaborations, otherwise it will be back to square one,” he said with a touch of humor.

As in all his movies, Akshay has performed all the stunts in Kambakkht Ishq himself despite the many apprehensions of the studios in Hollywood. “There were no special effects at all, I did all the stunts myself,” he informed. “I had to undergo a test at Universal, as it was required under the law here, to prove my ability to perform all those stunts.”

But then he loves the derring-do, which is what makes him do it. “I get the opportunity to jump off buildings, swing from cables, do exciting stuff… I enjoy doing it and get paid for it… what more can I ask for?” says the actor who recently had a near-death experience when during the shooting of his next film ‘Blue’, he hurt himself and began bleeding while swimming 150 feet under the sea with some 40 sharks. “They had to get me out before the blood attracted the sharks, it was dangerous and I wouldn’t be here but for sheer luck.”

For Akshay who used to put up posters of Sylvester Stallone on his bedroom walls (along with those of Sridevi and Bruce Springsteen) long years ago when he used to live in Thailand, working with Stallone in Kambakkht Ishq was the realization of a dream. “I worked with Sridevi whom I used to admire and now I have worked with Stallone.

Dreams, I believe come true when you just believe in them and not talk about them. And now I think I should put up more posters in my room.”

So what kind of on-the-set conversations did he share with the original Rambo? “What could we have talked about? He told me about his bones broken in the line of his work and I talked about my own broken back… he talked about his doctors and I told him about my Ayurvedic doctor.

He got interested in the herbs, etc. that I was using and we also talked about Thailand where he worked in two films and I used to work there too… that’s all, we didn’t speak about body building at all,” he said eliciting much laughter.

Charming the audience with his simple wit and self-effacing humor, the actor threw in the sentiment of the doting Indian son for good measure when he said that his formula for success in life lay at the feet of his parents.

One of the biggest Bollywood releases this year, Kambakkht Ishq opened on 100 screens in the US and 2000 screens worldwide, according to Ken Naz, President of Eros International North America.

India Post News Service