Veteran comic actor Johnny Lever says comedy, which is more of a performance based art, is missing from films now.

The 57-year-old actor, who was last seen in comic caper 'Entertainment', says genuine comedy has been replaced by dialogues and punches in films these days. "Performance in comedy these days is missing. It is all punches and dialogues that is being served as comedy in films nowadays," Johnny told PTI. "Comedy is more an art of body language and gestures -- it is more a performance of an artist than the lines given to him/her," he added.

During his recent visit to the Capital, Johnny, who has appeared in over 250 Hindi films, reasoned that the "lack of performance" leads actors and writers to construe double-meaning dialogues as comedy.

"This lack of performance could be seen as the reason why actors and writers get 'misguided' and are deviated to serve double meaning dialogues and other antics in the name of comedy. The level of comic performance has certainly gone down over the years. Artists like Mehmood, Dilip Kumar, Amitabh Bachchan are performers... they are born in centuries," Johhny said.

"You see in comedy - performance is the cake and dialogue is like the icing on that cake. But now what we see is only icing and no cake," he added.