“In the Indian film industry, especially those of us who are in mainstream cinema, we invariably play a typical hero’s role.”

The trade magazine and all was banned in my house. The first time I read a film magazine was when I was 18.

I’m an actor, paid to act. I don’t bring personal problems to the sets. Dad taught me that.

My films are of paramount importance to me, the same as my family. That’s not going to change. This is a balance I have to strike throughout my life.

My daughter is not an object to flash around or a prized item to put on display.

Just because I don’t show six-pack abs doesn’t mean that I don’t have them.

Off sets, they are big stars for others, and they carry themselves the way they want to. When they are working, they are not stars.

I feel that one of the hardest things in acting is the way you need to switch your emotions.

I like working on my birthday, so I always do.

I am not one of those people who will ever be comfortable mocking or making caricatures of the stereotypes attached to any community.

The best gift for an actor is the love of the fans. Many make sweet cards, write letters and even come and meet me wherever I am in India.

The joy and happiness it gives you or the emotions you go through when you hold your child in your arms for the first time are indescribable!

The love and blessings of your elders is also always cherished, but the extra mile that the fans go to is memorable.

Every actor has his own identity. I don’t aspire to be Bond. My quest is to do something new, something different.

I don’t believe in asking God for anything. If I am worthy, He will give it to me. I think we should earn his blessings; I have never believed in mannats.

The only fear I have is that I will wake up one day and nobody will allow me to do films. This is a fear every actor has.

A successful film is a good film, and a non-successful film is a bad film. It’s as simple as that.

I’m still fighting. I don’t know how much longer, but I’m still fighting a struggle, which is to make cinema alive and not just make another film.

It’s a way of living, cinema. And I see my family, I do this and that, I travel. It’s a long process to let it happen.

If there’s one thing that can save the novel, it is to make it independent of cinema, to narrate in a way that cinema can never narrate, using to its benefit those particular characteristics which belong to writing.

I don’t try to make a place in history at all! People put me in the history of cinema because my first film, La pointe-courte, was so ahead of some other filmmakers.

The structure of my novels has nothing to do with the narrative mode of cinema. My novels would be very difficult to film without ruining them completely.

I live in cinema. I feel I’ve lived here forever.

When I started my first film, there were three women directors in France. Their films were OK, but I was different. It’s like when you start to jump and you put the pole very high – you have to jump very high. I thought, I have to use cinema as a language.

Good cinema is good cinema. It makes you feel like you need to work.