In a July 2020 interview, actor Jisshu Sengupta described how filmmaker Rituparno Ghosh changed the way he built a character: instead of only reacting to a scene, he began imagining the character’s past and the reasons behind their behavior. Sengupta was speaking as his film Shakuntala Devi, in which he played Paritosh Banerji, was about to be released.
What Rituparno Ghosh taught Sengupta about acting
Sengupta recalled that he had largely been acting by instinct and responding to the script when Ghosh encouraged him to think beyond the immediate scene. As Sengupta recounted the advice to India Today, he should imagine the character’s backstory and consider why the person behaves as they do. Sengupta described this as a lasting change in his approach, not as a rule that every actor must follow.
Ghosh’s influence extended well beyond one piece of advice. Sengupta called him a mentor and guide in a PTI interview carried by NDTV. Their collaborations included The Last Lear (2007), Shob Choritro Kalponik (2009), Abohomaan (2010), Noukadubi (2011) and Chitrangada: The Crowning Wish (2012).
Ghosh died in 2013. Sengupta told Scroll.in that the loss affected him so deeply that he stopped acting for eight or nine months. The same profile quotes Sengupta recalling Ghosh’s view that they were all making Indian films in different languages; Sengupta said that was why he thought of himself as an Indian actor.
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Who Sengupta played in Shakuntala Devi
In Anu Menon’s 2020 film, Sengupta played Paritosh Banerji, the husband of mathematician Shakuntala Devi, played by Vidya Balan. Sanya Malhotra played their daughter, Anupama. At the time of the interviews, Sengupta was careful about discussing the character in detail before audiences had seen the film.
He told India Today that the script and Menon’s direction guided his portrayal. With limited information available to him about Banerji, he said, he had room to add nuances while being careful not to overstep. Sengupta also said that Anupama’s family later recognized their relative in his performance; that is his account of their response, not an independently documented assessment.
In an interview with The Indian Express, Sengupta described the film as a way to show Devi’s human side through her relationships. He called her a woman ahead of her time, bold and brave. The film began streaming on Amazon Prime Video on July 31, 2020, according to contemporary coverage. That is a release-era fact, not confirmation of current availability in any country.
Paritosh Banerji and The World of Homosexuals
Scroll’s 2020 profile connects Banerji’s homosexuality to Devi’s book The World of Homosexuals, published in 1977. The profile characterizes the book as a compassionate look at the gay community and reports that the marriage ended in divorce in 1979. Those descriptions and biographical details are reported by Scroll; the interviews cited here do not independently establish the book’s contents or verify the divorce record.
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Sengupta’s work in Bengali and Hindi films
Scroll’s profile presented Sengupta as a Kolkata-based actor with a substantial Bengali film career and an increasingly familiar supporting presence in Hindi films. It pointed to roles alongside strong women in Mardaani and Manikarnika: The Queen of Jhansi, as well as his upcoming role in Shakuntala Devi.
In his 2020 interview with India Today, Sengupta personally contrasted the scale of Bengali and Hindi film productions. That is his account of the work environments he had experienced, rather than a current measurement of either industry. His description of himself as an Indian actor making films in different languages offers a useful frame for a career moving between those contexts without treating language as a boundary.
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