“I don’t think it does the audience any good to know what I do to prepare.”

Either you’re growing or you’re decaying; there’s no middle ground. If you’re standing still, you’re decaying.

I had a bunch of lean years where I had to do things, a lot of which I wasn’t wildly enthusiastic about.

I’ve always considered myself an actor, but I wasn’t making a living as an actor.

Ten years ago, it would have been impossible to imagine a Cockney singing group with a Southern Negro style and Indian and electronic music.

All I can say is if the part doesn’t delight me in some way, or I can’t feel any compassion for it, I just can’t do it.

Things are never going to turn out how you think they will.

A product is most easily sold when it has an identity. So they wrap you all up and put a label on you.

Even at that age, six and seven and eight, why I was moved by certain things they did

And then that’s what you have to be. But what I’m looking for is the opportunity to explore what I can do, probing the limits, learning.

If you want to be an actor and you love acting, you can do it whether you’re doing something else or not.

Creativity means learning where the rules exist, and then breaking them! Saying, “It’s better this way.” But you have to know the rules in order to break them with any grace.

I don’t love the business. I never wanted to be a part of it. I don’t think any actor does.

” Education does not mean jamming information into somebody’s head. Rather, it’s that ancient idea that all knowledge is within us; to teach is to help somebody pull it out of themselves.

We might just as well let the rest of it go, join the party, and dance our hearts out.

There’s a familiarity that sometimes shocks and annoys the hell out of me.

TV has taken reflection out of the human condition. People didn’t use to have a ready answer for everything, whether they knew something about it or not.

I’m not the best audience for that because I’m not a great science-fiction fan. I just never got off on space ships and space costumes, things like that.

If I’m selling, I want them all selling in the audience. If I’m coming back, I want them all coming back. If I’m bleeding, I want them bleeding. If I win, they win. If I lose, they lose.

It’s the actors who are prepared to make fools of themselves who are usually the ones who come to mean something to the audience.

Documentaries are a powerful and effective way of bridging the gap between worlds, breaking through to new audiences that wouldn’t otherwise be engaged – in essence, not preaching to the choir.

I’m always gonna do my own thing. I wanna be something – whether I’m 19 years old working at a pet store, or I’m 19 years old with a No. 1 record – I wanna be the biggest I can be to my crowd, no matter what my crowd is.

I have the audience I deserve. Or at least I have the audience that represents the kind of people that I like.

The audience that storms the box-office of the theater to gain entrance to a sensational show is small and sleepy compared with the throng that crashes the courthouse door when something concerning real life and death is to be laid bare to the public.

It’s a win-win situation when you make your debut with a superstar like Salman Khan, Shah Rukh Khan, or Sunny Deol. The audience walks in to watch the actors they idolise; they also end up noticing beginners like me.