If I don't do another film after Superstar, it won't bother me, says Bilal Ashraf.

Byline: MOHAMMAD KAMRAN JAWAID

The more we talk, the more animated Bilal Ashraf becomes. Constantly moving in his chair, as if the seat can't contain him, he says he is out of energy. He even says that he's thinking of not doing anything for at least another year.

The subterfuge isn't working, because grand plans are afoot. Plans he neither accepts nor denies.

Bilal, I can tell you, has no career in politics. Unless, that is, he becomes a better actor and learns to lie better. The question then is: does he even want to lie, or is he just superstitious?

Bilal's smile is masked by a thick beard. It's growing out of aloofness, he says (though, I suspect otherwise). The twinkling in his eyes says that he is still overawed by the success of Superstar, and that he is cautious of not tripping over.

For a person who has nothing to say, he is sure telling me a lot.

Bilal Ashraf has seen lows in his career that beat the stuffing out of him. But the career-defining success of Superstar has transformed him, he says. Now he's all about the neeyat.

Sitting by a large window at a coffee shop in DHA, Karachi, I ask Bilal a question whose answer I already know: what does an actor do when he's not doing films?

'Chill,' he answers. 'Try to take a break, travel - which has been long overdue.' Even after Superstar, he hasn't given much time to his family, and he has definitely ignored his father's building and construction business. '[I] need a break desperately,' he says.

Bilal belongs to a well-to-do family, but chooses to be happy-go-lucky and unencumbered by responsibilities. He tells me he orders his guards to stay put at home as he drives himself to work, meetings and just about everything else. He just wants to be an everyday man. An everyday man, who is, incidentally, a well-known actor.

He's cool. But then again, he's always been cool, even when he was pulling himself together after the tragedy named Rangreza.

Photos: Shahbaz Shazi

To quote my review which appeared in Icon back then '[Bilal was] all dimples and heavy monotonic voice'.

Today, I can't see his dimples (they're somewhere behind his jungle of a beard), and his voice isn't a monotone.

I remember things being quite different when meeting Bilal for the first time at another coffee shop in DHA, nearly two years back. Back then he was just about to sign (or maybe had already signed) Superstar. Tehmina Khaled, a mutual friend, had been singing praises of his work ethic, saying that he has the tendency to go above and beyond the call of duty, both during and after production.

When we met, he had told me that he's had enough of his own tendency to over-involve himself in projects...