Naseeruddin Shah's son Imaad says actor refused to pay for his FTII education, asked him to fund it himself: ‘Baba has his own relationship with…'

Indian Express

19-05-2025

Naseeruddin Shah's is a family of actors, both on stage and in front of the camera. Having graduated from National School of Drama, New Delhi, both Naseeruddin and his wife Ratna Pathak Shah always wanted their kids to gain advanced education. However, when they chose not to, it upset them initially, especially mother Ratna.
'I felt we have the resources, and we'd really like our kids to have formal education opportunities. But all of them rejected those opportunities,' said Ratna. 'They did their basic education, but no skilling kind of training did they want from a formal setup. And it bothered me a great deal,' she added.
In the podcast on the YouTube channel of Aadyam Theatre, Ratna and Naseeruddin's elder son Imaad Shah recalled that when he told his father he wanted to go to the Film & Television Institute of India (FTII), he asked Imaad to fund it himself. 'Baba had his own relationship with FTII,' said Imaad.
For the uninitiated, when Naseeruddin Shah was a student at FTII Pune, he participated in a hunger strike because the direction course students outsourced more experienced actors for their short film instead of hiring actors from the acting course at FTII. 'There were actually students of acting who went through their two years without once facing a camera,' he wrote in his 2014 memoir And Then One Day, adding that the event created 'lasting animosities.'
Like Ratna, Naseeruddin also wanted his kids to be educated even if they wanted to be actors. 'What the acting profession needs is educated actors. That's a very strong belief I have. Every young man or lady who comes to me and says I want to be an actor, I tell them don't think that means you can skip your education. It's a crying need today. We've had uneducated actors ruling the roost long enough,' said Naseeruddin.
Ratna added that she's glad their kids pursued advanced education eventually, even though that was self-taught. 'They are all genuinely self-educated in spite of all the formal education opportunities they had. Their work-related education is almost entirely self-motivated. I find that very fascinating. I wonder what the drawbacks of that are. There are a few, I can see. But it's a terrific way to approach training yourself,' she said.
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Naseeruddin quoted the examples of late actor Om Puri and late cinematographer Ashok Mehta as self-taught masters of their respective professions. He lauded daughter Heeba Shah for writing plays, which he or Ratna has never achieved. While Imaad also learnt music, and is a member of the band Madboy/Mink, the younger son Vivaan Shah is an author apart from being an actor. He's written three books so far.