Pi And I Are Similar

    • rohit.david@timesgroup.com
    • Publish Date: May 27 2016 1:34PM
    • |
    • Updated Date: Jun 2 2016 5:45PM
Pi And I Are Similar

Oscar-winning filmmaker Ang Lee selected Delhi student Suraj Sharma out of 3,000 boys to play the lead in the movie Life of Pi. In an interview to The Times NIE, he speaks on how he got selected and on the role...


How did you get selected?

I had never acted but I knew a little about acting because my younger brother has appeared in two movies and my mother used to tell me I should act too.  Once I had gone for an  audition with my brother because he promised to buy me lunch.  I was waiting for him and the casting director came up to me and said, ‘you look about the right age—you should give an audition too.’ And I thought I might as well. I just had to read something out of a survival manual. I didn’t even know what the movie was. Honestly, I didn’t even think of it as a real audition and took it casually. But as luck would have it, that audition changed my life.


What was the most difficult part of the movie?

When I first came to Taiwan, I was a really skinny twig.  I say twig because  I didn’t have muscles,  didn’t have a straight back. Then I trained with the stunt guys.  I went through very intense swimming training in the beginning; I swam for three hours a day and worked out in the gym. There was balancing practice. There were obstacle courses.  I also had boat training because I didn’t know how to stand in a boat. 

Tell us about your role...

It’s about Pi, a 16-year-old boy who grows up in a zoo with his family in India and moves to Canada due to certain  unavoidable circumstances. It’s the struggle of Pi when the ship  sinks and he is left alone on a lifeboat with a  zebra, a hyena, an orangutan and a tiger. 


Working with Lee:

It was extremely scary in the beginning because he is such a great director. Also I had never opened up to anyone at all before. Ang was the first person I talked to about myself and surprisingly, I really felt comfortable with him. Ang is awesome. There is no one who knows me better than Ang.


How do you relate yourself to the character Pi?

I think somewhere inside me there’s a little bit of me that is very much like Pi. I really can’t say what is that but I know I can feel it.


What have you learnt from Pi?

Pi thinks out of the box.  He refuses to lose hope.  What defines Pi is his never-ending will to survive which should be imbibed by all of us.


Your experience shooting with a tiger...

There were four different tigers of different sizes and personalities. We never really filmed with them but sometimes I spent six hours a day watching them being trained.  I’d watch how they move and see how they behaved.  I’ve always been fascinated with tigers.  It was hard but it was cool.


Have you read Yann Martel's original? 

It is not an easy read but as I went through the book. I got so involved that by the end of it I was like:  ‘Oh my God it’s amazing.’ It is really is inspiring. I loved the book. 


What's next for you?

I don’t know.  I don’t know whether I want to act; that remains to be seen. 


About Suraj Sjarma 


  • Sharma trained seven days a week for three months in Taiwan. This included learning how to swim because the film was extensively shot in a gigantic water tank built in a hangar in Taiwan.
  • He is a philosophy student in St Stephen’s College, New Delhi
  • His younger brother, Sriharsh, has also acted in Wes Anderson's Darjeeling Limited in 2007

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