“The only thing my famous last name got me was a foothold in the industry. That was the easy part. The biggest problem is survival. As Fazil’s son, I am expected to know everything – acting, dancing, horse riding… I am not trained in all these, and I don’t think I ever will be.”

It doesn’t matter to me how I look on screen. What matters to me is how I connect with the audience.

When I began acting, my biggest fear was whether the audience will appreciate the kind of films I do.

I trust my directors to see me through, for I don’t consider myself as a natural actor – or a good one at that.

I have never been 100% confident that I am right about anything.

My thought process is in Malayalam. So, every time I have to work outside Malayalam, the process is a little stressful. I have to translate my Malayalam thoughts into English and back to Tamil.

I believe that anyone with a bit of guidance can act.

Most of the films that I do help me learn something.

I’ve always wanted to do a role based on a real-life person.

I will continue to do films that excite me.

I like to laugh and to make people laugh.

When I choose the scripts, all I look forward to is an impressive narration.

Every character, when it comes to a cinematic representation, gets complicated and layered. You are given a lot of dimensions than a single dimension to an individual. That’s the main difference between seeing something out of the window and seeing something on screen.

I have grown up seeing success and failure.

Failure is part and parcel of the process of experimenting with roles and films.

For me, ‘Diamond Necklace’ is a commercial attempt, as it has songs and glamour.

People expect star kids to be perfect – horse-riding, fighting.

When big-time blunders occur in any workplace, the boss or bosses usually are at fault, not clerks or secretaries or salespeople.

Everyone should fail in a big way at least once before reaching forty.

And if those two other doctors get paid by Big Snack Food, like certain climate deniers get paid by Big Coal, I shouldn’t take their advice.

There were dinosaur big bands, and that was great. Those were my influences.

Love is as big a myth that God sits with his flowing white beard in a throne and looks at us.

Al and Tommy and I sharing the biggest laugh because it was predicted by everything we did in the first three or four records in my career.

But when Americans lack the most basic information about our domestic surveillance programs, they have no way of knowing whether we’re getting that balance right. This lack of transparency is a big problem.

Big pharma has a strangle hold on the politicians. They’re stepping over the corpses of the children of America to cash their checks.