Abbas Kazmi’s filmi role-call

Did you know that Qasab’s defense lawyer shared screen space with Dharmendra, Feroze Khan and Jeetendra?

He may be an orthodox lawyer while at work, but there is a flashy side to Abbas Kazmi, defense lawyer for 26/11 attacker Ajmal Amir Qasab. In their latest edition, PEOPLE magazine has reported that during one of the proceedings Judge M L Tahiliyani, to cut the grimness in the courtroom in Arthur Road Jail, said, “Mr Abbas Kazmi is also an actor!”




The lawyer whose every move in the courtroom is being watched these days, attempted to make some deft moves as a theatre and film actor before he donned the lawyer’s robe. He acted in a film titled Rang with Jeetendra back in ’93, where he played a cop (see picture on right). The film did well at the time, but the role of the cop was hardly an Iftekar-moment in Kazmi’s career as a film actor. He confesses that he can be very bratty and flamboyant outside the courtroom - “pampered by my mother and subsequently, my wife” - and his foray into acting was a reflection of that.





Abbas Kazmi in the 1993 film titled Rang

Speaking of flash and flamboyance, his first brush with late actor Feroz Khan as a child artiste only enhanced that dormant quality in him, he says. He acted in Anjaan Rahen with Khan and Asha Parekh, and was in awe of the actor through the shooting of the film. “I could only extract from Feroz Khan’s flashiness. It perfectly matched the energy that was welling up inside me as a child,” he says. Jugnoo was yet another film that threw him in the company of stars such as Dharmendra and Hema Malani.      



He owes his involvement with amateur theatre through college and after, as a sign of wanting to reinvent himself beyond what was academically ordained for him. Can he recall some memorable lines from a play? “‘Friends, Romans, countrymen…’,” he rattles off from Julius Caesar, where he had enacted the role of Mark Antony, back in school in ’70. “It was such a powerful speech, and by the end of it Antony managed to turn the tables on Brutus,” he says in admiration.



He has also worked in Kavita Chowdhury’s courtroom drama titled ‘Your Honour’. No one remembers that though. Is there a role he fancies in future? “Marlon Brando from The Godfather; anything less challenging will not interest me,” he says