Arjun Rampal

Even though I always knew I had a good nose for fragrances, the process of creating my own, 'Alive,' turned out to be a great learning experience for me. And the name explains my reason behind it. Smelling good makes you feel alive.

I've been lucky to get some path-breaking films, which proved to be the turning point in my career. Be it 'Rock on!' 'The Last Lear' or 'Raajneeti,' directors started working in a different way.

As an actor, it's my job to prepare myself for a role. If the character is realistic, one can't go wrong.

I find 12 P.M. as the best time to work out. During training, I do two body parts a day: chest-back, back-triceps or chest-biceps so that my body doesn't get used to a pattern.

I know what it is to put on weight. But when I got back to my routine, my body knew how to react. That's muscle memory, and you'll be amazed at what it can do.

The idea is to keep reinventing yourself. Once you attain a certain status as an actor, your fans start expecting from you and you should be able to fulfill them. That's why I try to choose as many different kind of roles as I can so that my fans are not disappointed with me. It would also get boring for me as an actor to keep repeating myself.

Being fit helps me improve my concentration, my will power and even my determination.

I think I'm close to lot of people in Bollywood, but I believe in evil eye, and I feel when I talk about friendships and relationships in public something somewhere goes wrong with it.

I used to be an athlete and even ran the 400 metre stretch for Tamil Nadu. I have always been active.

What challenges me is this - I want to walk out of a film with the experience of having done a film, not with a feeling that I have sleepwalked through it.

As a child, I had no idea that I would end up in the film industry. My ambitions changed from wanting to join the army like my grandfather to taking up merchant navy as a career to running for India, and finally, investment banking while I was a student of economics honour. But during my college days, I began to get offers for modelling.

Born in Jabalpur, I was brought up in Deolali, where my father ran a small business of making fire extinguishers.