Once upon a time, managing actors meant handling their shooting schedules and payments; today, it's bigger, glitzier, with a heavy dose of corporate might
While working on a celebrity issue—as opposed to working on our regular business stories—we have come to realise the significance of, no, not just the celebrity, but also the celebrity ‘manager’. You want an interview? Call the manager (not once, or twice, but several times). A photo shoot? Manager again. Location, styling, and photographer for the shoot? You guessed it: The manager.
The manager is what you could call the star’s ‘interface’. They manage the actor’s shooting dates, daily schedules, every form of professional commitment, interviews with journalists, and the media; they even hand out advice on career and clothing, investments and interactions.
And, like stars themselves, star management too has evolved: From being a one-person, one-office show, it is now a full-fledged corporate enterprise, teeming with staff and worth millions. While old-school managers still flourish, with their phones and files and office assistants, talent management agencies have added a thick layer of glam to the job.
But back in the day, when being a manager had little to do with glamour, there was (and continues to be) Rakesh Nath, better known as Rikkuji within the industry. On a wall in his Juhu office hangs a framed testimony: “Limca Book of Records. To Rakeshnath, for being the business manager for maximum number of actors and actresses in Bollywood [sic].” Surrounding this frame, and adorning every wall of the office are photographs of him with actors and actresses from the 1970s, ’80s, ’90s… right up till Kangana Ranaut.
“I started promoting actors for survival,” says Nath. “I came to Bombay [from Punjab] to become a film producer in December 1969 and lost all my money. Surviving in Bombay is very difficult, so I did a lot of work. One day, I was working as a production assistant, when a young girl called Ranjeeta Kaur offered me her work [in the mid-1970s]. Immediately, I grabbed the opportunity. We clicked and the movies she worked in did well. She worked with the best heroes, so in a way, I was lucky for her, and she for me. I worked with her for about 12 years, till she got married.”
The success with Ranjeeta led to many more associations, some of which proved to be even more successful; the most notable, perhaps, being the one with Madhuri Dixit. “It was while I was working with Anil Kapoor that I met Madhuri, through her hairdresser. She was working in television at that time, and on a film called Abodh, directed by a Bengali director called Hiren Nag. I liked her face, and thought she was capable of doing good work. By then, I had developed a knack of recognising talent. I thought, she is a talented girl.” This was in 1984, when Dixit, a teenager, was soon approached by the biggies of filmmaking: Subhash Ghai and Boney Kapoor.
He has also worked with Shilpa Shirodkar, Adnan Sami and Kangana Ranaut, among others. But despite the high-lumen roster, he says he has only worked with newcomers: “In my career, I have never worked with any star, I have always worked with newcomers; and this has happened by chance, not by choice. No star has offered me work; it has always been newcomers who have come to me. And I have grown with them.”
“Managing an actor is different for different levels of artistes: If you are a newcomer who is absolutely raw, it is very different from when you are working for an established actor,” he adds.
This is something that YRF Talent claims to have got down pat: Its portfolio boasts of names like Rani Mukerji, Anushka Sharma, Ranveer Singh, Parineeti Chopra and Sushant Singh Rajput.
Settling in for a long chat after a morning shoot is Ashish Patil, business and creative head, and vice president at Yash Raj Films (YRF).
Following the influx of large studios into India, Aditya Chopra, YRF’s chairman, decided to ramp up production eight or nine years ago, and embarked on grooming directors and producers. From the traditional output of one film every two years (followed by his father Yash Chopra, and then by Aditya himself), the target was revised to five to six films a year. “Our model is not an acquisition model: Our processes are built from scratch; we are creatively involved right from the idea to how we distribute it, everything is in-house,” says Patil. ‘This is what gives a certain look and feel, and a control over the final creative output. Therefore, it is important to groom the right people, and work with the right people.”
YRF also invests significantly in grooming and training actors. Depending on the requirements of a particular script, they rope in experts in the fields of dance or diction to work with the actors. For instance, says Patil, “Sushant [Rajput, who plays MS Dhoni in a forthcoming biopic] is training for cricket; he is training with some of the people who trained Dhoni. Grooming depends on each person’s skill sets, and the requirements of a film.”
(This story appears in the 26 December, 2014 issue of Forbes India. To visit our Archives, click here.)