MUMBAI: Saif Ali Khan has declined lead roles in Ram Gopal Varma’s Sholay, where he was offered the part of Veeru, and Mani Ratnam’s latest bilingual in Hindi and English to be shot in London.

“Practically speaking, I could do just one of these three huge projects. All of them were top-of-the-line stuff with great roles for me,” Saif said.

“The dates for Mani’s films were clashing with Siddharth Anand’s next, which I have agreed to do. I’d have loved to work with Mani. He is after all... Mani! As for Sholay... yeah, who wouldn’t want to do it? Some day I’d love to do a big gangster film. In fact, Vishal Bhardwaj’s adaptation of Othello is a big gangster film.”

After a lot of deliberation, Saif has decided to play Iago in Vishal’s much talked about Hindi adaptation of Othello. “Vishal wanted me in January-February 2006 and that suited my schedule just fine. It is a bloody good script. And I get to do a full-on rustic character with a UP accent and all. I have never done all this before. It’s got really cool dialogues.”