By Subhash K Jha

If Kidnap is the most emotional film Sanjay Dutt has done in his career it's not because adventure-thrillers move him to tears.

It's because this was a story of a father who's kept away from his daughter first by his wife and then by a kidnapper.

"What if my daughter Trishala is kidnapped...that's what Baba (Sanjay Dutt) kept asking while shooting, " says director Sanjay Gadhvi.

"I really didn't want to evoke real-life parallels to get the emotions out of him. I think that's a very lowdown way to get the right emotions out of your actor. But Baba himself saw an instant sense of identification. And every time he would look at Minissha Lamba (who played his daughter) I think he was reminded of Trishala."

Very often on the sets Sanjay Dutt would break down and cry.

Says Gadhvi, "I didn't have to evoke any emotions. It just came to him. He reminded himself of his daughter locked up in a dingy room, being kept hungry, tortured, etc. And he would be totally consumed by the desire to get her back, as though the Minissha character was really his daughter."

And to compound the connectivity Dutt's screen wife Vidya Malvade has moved away from the marriage with their daughter.

"Believe me we drew no parallels from Baba's life. This was the way the screenplay was written five years ago, " swears Gadhvi.

The last time Sanjay Dutt identified so closely with a character was Mahesh Manjrekar's Pitah where Dutt had played the father of a raped child.

It had been a horrific experience for the actor. Says Gadhvi, "Kidnap is more escapist. But Baba's ties with his daughter have grown much stronger over the years."

In fact Sanjay Dutt is dying to do a desi version of Steve Martin comedy Father Of The Bride about an over-possessive father who hits the roof when his darling daughter brings home a fiancee.