Ajay Devgan is riding the obligatory publicity carousel. Golmaal Returns has been declared a winner and the media-shy actor has come to terms with the occupational hazards of his job. He is fitting in the media between shooting for London Dreams in London and planning a 10-day holiday with his family to an undisclosed destination.

Noon is still early on a Sunday afternoon and the office at Devgan Entertainment, the actor’s production company, is being spruced up. It’s an ordinary workman place, remarkable for its lack of screaming attention to the star boss. There are a few posters of his films in the hall but the eye is immediately drawn to a picture of Devgan with daughter Nysa. Inside the comfortable visitors’ room, an ordinary shelf holds his acting trophies, including his two National Award medallions, and some of his actor wife Kajol’s as well. Tucked away among them is a signed postcard: To Ajay, Kajol and Nysa, Best Wishes, Tony Blair.

Devgan walks in clad in a standard white Tee and blue jeans. There is an armlet of large marble pellets wrapped around his bulging bicep. “Those are health stones,” he explains. “It’s a medical thing advised by a doctor a couple of years ago for a back problem. It worked for me so I wear them.”

The actor’s frame is honed in a home gym with daily workouts of 90 minutes. He manages five days at most in a week, he says as he fishes for his fix of Benson and Hedges. “I have a decent diet, not a very good one for I love my alcohol. To cover that up I do workouts and stay fit,” he says unapologetically. How many does he smoke a day? Lots. Two packs? More, comes the fearless reply. Pesky health ministers notwithstanding.

An actor who mixes genres like colours in a palette, Devgan began with a memorable stunt in his debut film, the action-packed Phool Aur Kaante, when he rode into the frame balancing on two motorbikes. Seventeen years later he straddles two Hummers for the sequel to Golmaal.

“It’s not a very big stunt, just standing on two speeding Hummers simultaneously. Not very easy though, but not very difficult,” laughs Devgan, 39. Doing his own stunts comes naturally to the son of stunt director Veeru Devgan. “I want to do an action film. I am working out a script,” he says.

One can see he is making an effort to be accessible but it is evident that he guards giveaway details dexterously. His answers are etched in broad brushstrokes, and he slips into the next question quickly. “Yeah, I get along with most of my colleagues. That does not mean I need to hang out with them. I am a very reserved person. You will never see me at parties. Most of the time I am with my family after work,” he says. Instead his closest friends are those he met at Mithibai College where he graduated from. “Somebody is in the USA, somebody in Africa. We are all doing very well. They are my closest friends. We keep in touch,” he says.

When he launched into films he was a fight director’s son, not from Bollywood royalty, and with unconventional sultry dark looks to boot. Still, he was a hit from the word go.

Devgan’s father wanted him to be an actor, but his own attitude was more a “Yeaaaahh, we’ll give it a try one day but right now I am in college, and enjoying what I am doing.”

He started assisting director Shekhar Kapur and making his own video films. Then, one day “Kuku, Mr Kuku (Kohli), my first director, came and said, you are doing a film for me. My attitude was: Are you mad, not right now. They (dad and the director) both practically forced me and within a month I started shooting. I decided I would give the film my 100 per cent but after this I was going to move around with my portfolio and ask for work if it did not work out. But it clicked in a big way,” recalls Devgan, who walked away with Filmfare’s best male debut award that year.

Devgan went on to win the National Award for Zakhm and The Legend of Bhagat Singh. He turned director last year with U, Me aur Hum.

His self-assurance stemmed from a belief in himself. “I used to edit for my father when I was nine or ten years old. That’s how I started. I grew up in a film atmosphere. It was always films,” he says.

Devgan’s witnessed Bollywood changing from “films with eight action sequences and six songs” to those pivoted on a strong script. “Things have completely changed. We have changed because audiences have changed. Earlier, those rubbish films which we did worked. Now you make something which is mediocre and it’s not going to work,” says the actor who has been a favourite of a series of directors, including Mahesh Bhatt, Raj Kumar Santoshi, Ram Gopal Varma and Rohit Shetty. “And Mr Prakash Jha,” he interjects.

“They are capable of making good films and they have proven themselves. And we gelled very well, but it’s not that we always have to work together. If there is a script I don’t suit we discuss it and I may suggest: why not take so and so.”

What made him take on RGV Ki Aag, the disastrous remake of Sholay? Was it because it was by the director who gave him the much lauded Company? “I believed in the film — at what point it all went wrong we did not realise. I don’t completely blame Ramu (Ram Gopal Varma) because his intention was correct. Things sometimes go wrong.” He had no qualms about working with an unsuccessful newcomer like Nisha. He says with an absolutely straight face: “I think that I trust my director. If my director says this works I will trust him.”

His trust extends to how he interprets a role. That’s because Devgan says he is inherently lazy. “I don’t prepare at all. I don’t do rehearsals. That’s why I give credit for all my good performance and my bad performances to my directors, because they have to work hard on me,” he says cheerfully.

How does an actor prepare? If it’s Ajay Devgan, he doesn’t. You just land up on the sets, and they say action, and you go? “That’s exactly what I do,” he laughs.

One suspects his detachment is just public veneer. For Devgan Entertainment’s first house film Raju Chacha, the actor spared no cost. Yet the film boomeranged. “Since my first film, I’ve believed in myself. And they could turn out to be mistakes, but I always prefer to do something that I like to do.” With his directorial debut, he shot many of the dramatic scenes in one shot, including a nearly 10-minute long climax. “There was no need to keep cutting. I had placed multiple cameras. It’s not that I want to show off but being an actor helped,” he says matter of factly.

The ever-popular Kajol and he have been married for nearly a decade, after dating for four years. Neither of them popped the question. “At some point in the relationship it was taken for granted that we were going to be together,” he says. “You keep learning, keep realising, keep exploring, keep understanding the other person. And eventually you realise that, yeah, this is the right person for you. Touch wood, yes. It has worked out well,” he smiles, acknowledging they are thinking of another baby. “She wants another child and I am happy with one. So let’s see who wins,” he chuckles.

After Nysa’s birth five years ago, his world revolves around his daughter. “It’s just her all the time. It happens to every father. I am not an exception but that’s how life goes.”

In London Dreams due next year, Devgan and Salman Khan have been cast as aspiring rock stars. Devgan, however is already, scoring ideas. “I also want to direct a comedy — it’s not a comedy, I am working on it, but it’s something really bizarre” —he catches himself in the nick of time —“so we will talk about it when I finalise it,” he says quickly.

Devgan concedes he is still media shy. “That’s how I have been. I am also a lazy person. But it’s part of your job. If I had my way…” he says, rolling his eyes. Since he is not the kind to bare his soul in an interview one asks him to describe himself in three words. “You really cannot,” he grins.

He just did. In three words.