by Subhash K Jha

It looks like Sammir Dattani is getting himself a large share of attention from unexpected places. We first have his Mukhbir director Mani Shankar saying, "Sammir's performance in my film is simply heart-melting. Mukhbir will see him being launched as one of the most important new talent in recent times.

"His performance will have every mother in the audience wanting to protect him and every father wanting to beat up the guys who did this to him. As for the girls they'd want to check him out really closely because his character Kailash undergoes a circumcision before infiltrating a terrorist outfit."

Now there's the London-based Provoked producer J. Murli Manohar who's all set to sign Sammir for a big-budget regional film. Sammir who's known as Dhyaan in Karnataka is a formidable force at the Kannada boxoffice, what with 3 of his 4 films in the language turning out to be smash hits. In fact Dr Murli was impressed by Sammir-Dhyaan after seeing the young actor in his latest Kannada release Amrithdhare.

But Sammir isn't sure of how seriously he should go for his regional success. "I get very good offers from there. But my career in Hindi is just taking off. I can't afford to do too many Kannada films. Since I owe my initial success to them I'll do one Kannanda film a year," he concludes gratefully.

Interestingly it's the Bollywood girls who go through this dilemma. Sammir is the first male actor in Hindi who's caught in the linguistic crossfire.