Yashpal Sharma had initially turned down Mooso: The Mouse

Yashpal Sharma is playing a pivotal character in the upcoming film Mooso: The Mouse, which is adapted from John Steinbeck’s classic novel Of Mice And Men and marks the feature filmmaking debut of Deepankar Prakash.

During a chat in the course of the ongoing LIFFT India festival, Sharma said he fell in love with the character he was offered by Deepankar but had to say no initially because he was busy with his own directorial venture Lakshmi Chand. But the director just asked him to go through the script once. As it turned out, the role was meant for Sharma.

“Slowly as I started reading, I realized it’s an incredible script! But I still said I won’t be able to do it, but I will get some other actor. I asked Kumud Mishra, Piyush Mishra, Rajesh Sharma, Deepak Dobriyal, etc. But everyone had to say no for some reason or the other. Then ultimately I thought I should do it myself. The film is very close to my heart,” Sharma told festival founder director Riju Bajaj.

But there was some drama in store on the first day of the shoot. Sharma wasn’t happy with the first shot he gave. “It looked fake, unconvincing," he said. "There was some problem. So, I thought I should completely change myself. There was no other way or short-cut. Ishtiak Khan suggested I cut my hair. Even Rajendra Gupta felt that.”

So Sharma told the barber to use the trimming machine and cut the hair very short. “Deepankar shouted and asked him not to use the machine, but I was firm. By that time anyway, the barber had already used it, so then he had to trim it further,” Sharma said, laughing.

This move paid dividends. “I tried different things after that and the character slowly started developing. I realized that your look on the outside is so important,” said the veteran actor.