“I actually wanted to be a doctor. But doing all those horrid rat dissections made me faint. I studied science till the 12th standard and later took up commerce. I was planning to do chartered accountancy, but fate had something else in store for me.”

I know I look good. The regular adjectives that come my way – sexy, hot, dusky, bong bombshell I love them.

You don’t have to do offbeat films to prove that you can act. I have done it but only to prove myself that I can fit convincingly into every kind of films. I want to do the 100 crore film where the hero does all the work, and I get to relax.

I’m really bad at taking compliments, but whenever I get them, I tell myself, ‘Way to go, girl’ and move on.

I want to do entertaining films, where a woman gets the respect of being an actor.

I can’t let the baggage of my private life get into work. Artists are more fragile than normal people. But I know that I am a role model for zillions of people, so no matter how deep you are hurting, you need to come out strong.

I do a film if it interests me, has a connect with the audience and some entertainment value. The rest doesn’t matter.

I am so enriched because so much has happened in my life. The way I can express myself is because of the life I have led. It’s only when you experience life can you emote it.

I have done some tacky films, but then they were all my decisions, and I’m happy to have made those because they have made me who I am.

I enjoy the TV series ‘Dexter,’ where there’s a reason for every kill. Quentin Tarantino is a favourite, and a ‘Kill Bill’ action-packed movie would be up my street. I’d love to be India’s first scream queen!

Whenever I get married, it will be a Bengali wedding. If I won’t have a Bengali wedding, my mother won’t come. She has warned me. So, I am going to have a Bengali wedding for sure.

As a child, I was a brat, and my parents didn’t know how to control me. So they told me ghost stories, which stayed with me. I am still petrified of darkness and being alone.

My wedding won’t be a hush-hush affair. When I get married, everyone will get to know about it… there’ll be nothing speculative about my wedding.

Doctors are busy playing God when so few of us have the qualifications. And besides, the job is taken.

It’s an interesting arc. You start with a character [Doctor Strange] who’s likeable and charming but very arrogant and distant. He’s funny but you can see there are massive holes in his life. It’s a very painful transition and all that he becomes is tested so quickly and violently.

That cactus went right through my eye. It left my eye flat. They took me to a doctor, and he said, ‘We’ll have to take the eye out.’ …I fought like a tiger. I said, ‘No! Leave the eye alone.

There’s a heroic amount of effort that goes into making him [Doctor Strange] a superhero by the end of the film.

I wish medical schools helped us to analyze our healthy and unhealthy reasons for becoming doctors.

The birth control pill, to a great degree, made possible the (hetero)sexual revolution. Yet those who developed oral contraceptives did not intend their work to promote what the majority of Americans at the time called “promiscuity.”

There’s this old saying that, if you aren’t particularly gifted in natural sciences, if you don’t want to become a teacher or pastor or doctor, and don’t know what else to do, then you become a lawyer. But I’ve never regretted it.

I see people who die a few minutes after a doctor tells them there is no hope of a cure. They give up and go. Others get angry and find joy in proving the doctor wrong. Something within them is challenged and hopeful. Hope is the divine motivator.