Learning to make films is very easy. Learning what to make films about is very hard.

Even in high school I was very interested in history - why people do the things they do. As a kid I spent a lot of time trying to relate the past to the present.

Whatever has happened in my quest for innovation has been part of my quest for immaculate reality.

Film is not an easy occupation. There's a lot of occupations that are difficult and film is one of them.

Celebrity has become, for better or worse, an art form. An artist can use themselves as a medium to become a celebrity as a walking work of art.

My dad's an artist, and my grandfather paints - he's not a painter; my grandfather's a butcher - but he does a lot of crafts, stained glass, painting, that stuff. There is art in our family, and I was an art major in college along with being a theater major.

The demand in India is to have a hit, which becomes a promotion for the movie and makes people come to the theater. You have five songs and different promotions based on those. But when I do Western films, the need for originality is greater. Then I become very conscious about the writing.

One of my early money mistakes was getting fired from the first acting job I ever had. I was cast in a play as the lead, and I got fired three nights after the open.