The father of one of the child stars of the Oscar-winning film Slumdog Millionaire slapped him for refusing to give media interviews, a report said Saturday. Ten-year-old Azharuddin Mohammed Ismail, plucked from a Mumbai slum to play in the movie, has been barraged by media attention since returning to his shanty home earlier in the week from the Oscars awards ceremony in Los Angeles.
Jet-lagged after the long flight, Azharuddin wanted to sleep and refused to talk to reporters when his father got angry and slapped him, the Press Trust of India reported.
"I was being naughty. I did not want to give the interview because I was tired so he slapped me but he loves me," said Azharuddin, who came back Thursday to his tarpaulin-covered lean-to home.
Meanwhile, British-Indian author Salman Rushdie took a slap at the film itself as a "patently ridiculous conceit." Rushdie wrote in Britain's Guardian newspaper that the central feature of the film - that a boy from the Mumbai slums manages to succeed on the Indian TV version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire - "beggars belief."
Rushdie said the central weakness of the film - which won eight Oscars - was that it was adapted from a book by Indian diplomat-novelist Vikas Swarup called "= Q&A which is itself "a corny potboiler, with a plot that defies belief."