In an interview with GQ, out today, Bollywood’s brainy hunk — he has an MBA, apart from those abs — says of the fabulous Ms G, “I love her to death.” The actor, who is in a seven-year relationship with the stunning Bipasha Basu, believes that Priyanka is “going to be the real power centre in the future”.
Moving on, John tackles the subject of the male ‘dumb blonde’. “I started out as a model at a time when male models were reputed to be cerebrally challenged. I’d done my MBA, and I kept shouting it from the rooftops. But no one was listening,” says the actor.
Recently, folks got a taste of his brainpower when he was on a panel with Montek Singh Ahluwalia, deputy chairman of the Planning Commission, talking about the economy and inflation. “People were shocked. I’m supposed to be walking out of the water in trunks!” he laughs. “I love to discuss politics, communalism, and democracy. I watched all the American presidential debates. I know what’s happening around me.”
Driving force
What drives John is memory, “just being in everybody’s memory”. He wants to do “less but better stuff”, and on his own terms. “I’ll make my own road, and get there,” he states. “I don’t need to sit in a Ferrari to get there fast; I can sit in an off-roader and reach that destination.”
In private, John has some quirks: “I wash my hands 20 times a day, and all my things have to be arranged the way I like.” And oh, he is always in a relationship, if that’s a quirk. “I don’t know what it’s like to be out of one.” He has flirted, but never to get ahead and it has always landed him “in serious trouble.”
The new male
One of the hottest models and actors around feels that male models today are “great-looking, with better
bodies than what we had in those days”, but something is missing. “They don’t seem to have a sense of identity.” And that’s what sets the John Abrahams of this world apart from the regular beefy guy walking the runway.
