Leadership Quote by Anil Kapoor

There’s a quiet rebuke in Anil Kapoor’s phrasing: the industry loves to package deviation as a “strategy,” as if every offbeat choice is a brand exercise. By insisting it’s not conscious, he’s pushing back on the idea that “unconventional” is something you chase like market share. In a star system that rewards predictability - the dependable hero template, the safe arc - calling your choices unplanned is a way to reclaim instinct, taste, even accident as legitimate artistic forces.

The line also works as image management, but in a surprisingly human register. Kapoor has built a decades-long career across mainstream hits and character-driven turns; he’s old enough to know that actors get trapped by their own narrative. If you admit you “go for unconventional roles,” you risk sounding calculated, elite, or performatively serious. If you deny it, you get to keep two reputations at once: the crowd-pleaser who can still surprise you.

Subtextually, he’s describing a more honest creative process: roles arrive through timing, relationships, scripts that land at the right moment, and the actor’s evolving self. The “unconventional” label is often applied after the fact, once a performance works and critics need a storyline. Kapoor’s sentence slips the critic’s pen out of their hand: he’s not collecting oddities for prestige; he’s following curiosity and craft, and letting the category catch up later.