Prithviraj Sukumaran has a two-decade career behind him, and he says none of it matters once he's on a Meghna Gulzar set.

In an exclusive interview with Filmfare, the actor laid out how he approaches working with the director, and it isn't the usual actor-speak about "finding layers" in a character. It's closer to the opposite.

"I think Meghna is least bothered about the actor," Prithviraj said. "She does not care about the actor, but she cares a whole lot about the character. She creates these wonderful, well-written characters and she entrusts those characters to those she believes will be good in those roles."

That's a fairly blunt way to describe your own director, but Prithviraj clearly means it as a compliment. The trust only works, he suggests, if the actor is willing to get out of the way.

"When you go into a film as an actor, you think, 'I'm going to make this a very different performance,'" he said. "That's the wrong way to go about it. I'm merely an instrument in the hands of a director. My biggest achievement as an actor should be that my director has been able to portray the character through me as an actor."

It's an unusually self-effacing line from someone with Prithviraj's résumé, across Malayalam, Tamil and Hindi cinema. But he pushes the point further, arguing that an actor's job is to strip away the instinct to compare a new role against everything they've done before.

"The priority of my performance being different from my other films is secondary," he said. "I want to be part of the film and help the director's vision of the film. In that, if you feel that I am different from my other films, the entire credit for it should go to the director. Because I have only listened to the director's brief. Even the writer is responsible for feeding me the right interpretation of the director."

Filmfare didn't specify which project this conversation was tied to, and Prithviraj doesn't name one in the excerpts released. What comes through instead is a working philosophy, one he's applying on a Meghna Gulzar set right now, going by the framing of the interview.

Gulzar's films tend to run on tightly controlled, research-driven scripts, from Raazi to Sam Bahadur, and actors who've worked with her have often spoken of a director who holds the writing sacred. Prithviraj's comments fit that pattern.

The full interview is up on YouTube, and Filmfare has flagged it as part of a longer conversation. Whether that means more details on the film itself, or just more of this same conversation about craft, isn't clear yet.