At the end of almost every interview Randeep Hooda is asked about the current love of his life so now the actor has got himself his first mare, Dream Girl, and points to her when the question crops up. She's a warmblooded, Holsteiner breed, specialist show jumper from Germany and, he admits, that there's a lot of love and physical contact happening between the two. "My dog Candy brought female energy into my home, Dream Girl has brought female energy into my stable. She has a great temperament and is a sweetie pie," he asserts.
You wonder why it took him so long to play the field with a mare and he explains that they are different from stallions because of their cycles. But he's known Dream Girl who belonged to his friend Sanjay Dhanak for a while now and had his heart set on her. But Sanjay was not ready to part with her. Then, one night his show jumping coach, Colonel SH Ahlawat told him that she was up for grabs and Randeep exclaimed, "Done, I want her right now!" And she exchanged hands between friends.
He is quick to point out that he doesn't go for champion horses to win champion ships but horses with character, breeding and some problem so he can nurture them with love and care. "Ranji has one eye like Maharaja Ranjit Singh after whom he and the Ranji trophy is named, Cupa had a bad hawk or elbow joint in the hind leg and Johnny Walker was hairless and a bag of bones when I got him. Even as a child I brought injured strays home," he recalls. Ranji in fact developed lemonitis and came back from the dead thanks to the efforts of Mumbai-based vetenary surgeon Feroze Khambatta who was treating and even got a mechanical prosthetic leg for Shaktiman but couldn't save the horse. Dream Girl also has a little problem that Feroze is looking into. "I'm always mindful that no horse of mine should be pushed beyond a physical or medical condition in the quest for medals and hopeful that one day Dream Girl will gift him a beautiful foal," he smiles.
Randeep had to give the Cannes premiere of 'Sarbjit' a miss because the doctor advised him against travelling so soon after his appendicitis surgery. "I've been to the fest before, many times," he points out, having just finished some radio interviews for the upcoming biopic. He admits that it was a challenge living the life of a man of whom there are just a couple of photographs before his imprisonment in existence and one from the prison along with a 30-second video when he confessed to being Manjeet Singh Dhillon.
"I started the process of becoming Sarabjit with a photograph of him which his sister Dalbir Kaur used when campaigning for his release at dharnas. I'd already started losing weight so stuffed oranges in my cheeks to make them look fuller. When the trailer came out, there was a hue and cry on the social media about how we had used a picture of the real Sarabjit Singh till my director Omung Kumar pointed out that it was a picture of me as Sarabjit," reveals the actor, talking about the uncanny resemblance between the two.
He has completely won over Dalbir Kaur, Sarabajit's wife Sukhpreet and his daughters, Swapandeep Singh and Poonam. He invited them to the dubbing theatre and showed them three scenes from before Sarabjit went to prison, then refused to show them more. "But those three scenes had them laughing, tearing and rolling on the couch as they brought back many fond memories. Swapandeep pointed out to me that her father who'd been with her till she was two, used to call her Thandu and not Thallu as I was saying," says Randeep who rectified the research error by redubbing those scenes.
Ponam was still in her mother's womb when her father crossed the border, was convicted as a spy and imprisoned. She only got to see him when with her aunt, uncle, mother and sister she met him in jail after 18 years, four days before he was to be hanged. "For me, seeing their reactions was the biggest takeaway from the film. That's what made the starving and effort worth it. Dalbirji told me that when the girls saw me joking about attendance in the 'Laal Rang' trailer, they called me `naughty papa'," he grins.
Buzz is, Randeep is now playing gangster Abu Salem in another biopic. He is clueless but points out that he heard about Sarbjit first when Dalbir and his daughters said in an interview that Randeep was playing him. "I haven't been approached for another biopic yet, maybe I will learn about it from someone else too," he jokes. Touche!