“I feel that entertainment happens when fact and fiction is balanced.”

Let me make something clear: I can’t do anything in particular to make others laugh. I do what is necessary for a character. The body language of the character may make others laugh.

The less people know about you, the more you understand how beautiful life is. It’s good when you exist only on screen. I don’t want them to take me home. I love to have my privacy.

What I look for in a project is whether the storyline excites me.

I never wanted to be an actor but ended up being one.

Roles don’t fascinate me. It is the narrative, the screenplay that is fascinating.

If I do a film, I go to the place where it is based on, interact with people, and then, I believe, you pick up things without you even noticing.

It feels good to hear good things about yourself.

When you are talking about human emotions, stardom doesn’t matter.

Whenever I have really enjoyed being part of a film, it has worked well for me.

Offscreen, I’m a private person. I’m shy and don’t know how to face the public.

All I want to do is to make movies that are appealing to people.

I have always maintained that the audience should take a call on this. Its up to them to decide whether they want to see a pirated version or not. They should understand the effort and amount of hard work that go into a film.

In Malayalam, I can improvise, and acting is easy because I think in Malayalam, but for ‘Velaikkaran,’ I had to prepare for a role, which is a first for me.

I think it would be a dream for any actor to play someone like Changampuzha.

I like movies made by Spike Lee – doing those films out of the U.S., that is really daring.

I would like to do movies of all genres.

When I listen to a basic thought, I try to visualise the cinema in it. Sometimes it is dark, sometimes boyish, sometimes amateurish. It is a trial and error method. But the bottom line is that I want to entertain the audience.

I ain’t makin’ music for the media. I make music for the people in the streets – that want a street level of entertainment. I’m makin’ music because I have the streets to feed.

Make no friendship with an elephant keeper If you have no room to entertain an elephant.

It turns out that, at social gatherings, as a source of entertainment, conviviality, and good fun, I rank somewhere between a sprig of parsley and a single ice-skate.

I loved entertainment and acting, performing. I just liked the stage and having the spotlight and stuff.

I guess with the generation we live in, we just want to be entertained at the end of the day. A lot of artists make themselves accessible, so they feel like every artist should be like that. Some artists shouldn’t be so accessible, to me.

A time will come when instead of shepherds feeding the sheep, the church will have clowns entertaining the goats.

Our job, as actors, is not to tell the audience how interesting we are, but to entertain them with our films.