Parichay Sharma, currently seen in Vasudha, has spent years figuring out what actually makes a performance work, and most of it, he says, has nothing to do with talent alone.

From reading energy the way animals do, to using breath as a guide into emotion, to admitting how far he’s come since his first show, the actor opened up about the craft he’s still learning to master.

Not every lesson came from playing masterminds. One role taught him to read energy the way animals do.

It has shown me how, like animals, they are totally pure, and you can say anything to them but again if you love them, how the universe has designed us.

They don’t connect, or they will come and just rub their bodies against you. They work on energy. So when you play a character like that, then you work on energy, you feel on the vibe, Parichay Sharma said.

Staying inside an emotional scene without losing himself entirely, Parichay Sharma said, comes down to breath. When you hear the character’s first breath, that works.

This is generally happening in your subconscious mind, it’s not a technique, I think everybody uses it, when you know how to work with the breath.

When you do an emotional scene your breath is different, when you are doing a comedy or sitting with friends your breath is different.

Breath always guides you to the energy of the scene or the correct emotion, Parichay Sharma said.

Parichay Sharma on Staying in Character Between Takes

He also described the balancing act of staying partly in character between takes.

You zone in and zone out. If the character is a hundred percent emotional, you’ll be somewhere off camera around fifty, sixty percent, so that you can talk to other artists also, do other things also, so you don’t completely zone out.

In one or two minutes you can give it to a hundred percent and do the scene, and it will not be an awkward moment for you, Parichay Sharma said.

Playing an obsessive, aggressive character once bled into his own personality more than he expected. I was doing a character called Ranveer Dutt on Zee Zindagi.

This guy was obsessive, so when I went into it, I felt that I liked this dominance and this aggression, so I felt that yes it should be tamed.

But after a few days, in the evening also, it comes, the character sometimes triggers or it is already there and just gives flames to that raw material inside you.

That time I felt I became a little aggressive, and I started liking that aggression also, Parichay Sharma said.

Parichay Sharma Reflects on His Early Acting Journey

Looking back at where he started, Parichay Sharma was unsparing about his own early gaps. When I first started, I didn’t know about things, I didn’t know this breath work, I was not well read.

For an actor, confidence is half the work done. I didn’t know where to switch off, if somebody said something on the set.

Then layering, I didn’t know how layering works, how to give a layered performance. There was no layering, there was no confidence of the camera.

I am talking about the first show I worked on, Zee, Rajan Shahi’s show, he said.

What changed things, he said, was going out of his way to actually study the craft.

Parichay Sharma on Confidence and Camera Awareness

When I did master classes, foreign actors, foreign directors and teachers have given online, then you read a lot of books about acting, you see a lot of west cinema, and you understand what the pause gives, so much importance, this pause can change something.

Sometimes you don’t say a word and how to say it from the eyes. Unless you are interested, only then you get to know, and that has changed a lot, Parichay Sharma said.

He closed with the same humility that seems to define his approach to acting itself. Now I am more confident, but I am a good learner, I still feel there is a lot to learn.

If someone asks me ten years later I would say I didn’t know these things. Time is a teacher, and you should always be a student, Parichay Sharma ended.

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