I don't think Bollywood is only mindless cinema, but a lot of films they churn out are not films that I completely enjoy watching.
I always knew I was going to be successful in some way with films. I don't know why. I had no particular talent, but I always knew I was going to be sitting in a dining room with Lucille Ball and at a cocktail party with Bette Davis.
If I wasn't an actor and I watched my films, I could easily be like 'This guy's a clown,' you know?
A lot of times I'll make films that are mostly character-driven films - stories that involve people. Like, I make the joke: I like to make movies about human beings that live on Earth.
I didn't really discover yakuza films until about five or six years ago.
I really love independent films. There's something so determined about the people who work on them.
The highest grossing films have great, moral messages - not dirty, base themes, so we're trying to get producers to make more of the uplifting movies.
I am bound by a contract to not accept other films until 'Mohenjo Daro''s release.
I don't really look like people in films; I look like people in paintings.
I'm married to the theater but my mistress is the films.
In my general meetings, I certainly tell producers and executives that I'm interested in writing action films, but I think there's still a very specific set of writers they look at. And I don't think there's a lot of female writers on that list.
I think I had more freedom when I began making films. I did not know what could not be done. I was naive. I did what I wanted to. As you gain awareness, you start losing freedom.
Maybe because I come from choreography, I've always felt that there's something about action films that made it very natural for me to go that way. It's story through movement.
I did B com but realised that it was not my cup of tea. I was always fascinated by animation, and after I completed my course, I wanted to go abroad and pursue it. I used to sketch a lot and was rather serious about it. But all this was until I joined films.
When my career first began, I didn't have children - so there's a whole lot of difference in the way I choose roles now. Not just films for my children, but how long I'm going to be away, and is Dad going to be home while I'm gone. That sort-of factor plays a part.
Usually I'm frustrated when I look at my films and I don't believe that I've made a real transformation beyond my usual sets of gestures and expressions. I still have this nagging feeling that it's me, that I didn't create a unique character.
Dark Water was one of my favourite films to shoot because of Walter. I had seen the previous films he had directed, Central Station and Motorcycle Diaries, and I thought they were great. I really trusted him.
People think, 'Oh, well how can 'The Hobbit,' which is one book, become three films?' But you can take one line from an appendice and it turns into a whole sequence.
To put it simply, as a black man, I started watching films at the age of six, and I've since seen the bad guys changing race - between the African savages, to the Native Americans, and then the blacks and the Arabs and the Chinese and the Vietnamese. Look at 'Rambo': it's exactly that.
There are few films where you have women really driving the plot.
People think I am funny all the time. But I am not. I am serious, too. Also, I enjoy serious, dramatic films.
Films are really cool because, every couple months, or however many times you can get a job because there's a lot of luck involved in that, you're playing a different character.
In making films, I'm constantly looking for people who are in conflict and who are going to surprise you and challenge you.
My past films came out on home entertainment in the U.S., so the next question was, how do we get a theatrical in the U.S.? Well, you put a monster in it. That will do it, because people love monster movies.
We were on the island of Hawaii. I think I was there three months. It was fantastic. It is not much different than films. It depends on the television show but much of television today is as good or better than most films.
If I didn't have my films as an outlet for all the different sides of me, I would probably be locked up.
We try our best every time to make engaging films that we're interested in, and we just hope the rest of the world likes them.
From 1980 to 1990, I shot more films than any other actor in the Screen Actors Guild, apart from Gene Hackman.
I think the Hammer films really made death quite sexy.
Films are neither true nor false. That includes my films, as well as others. They may make claims that are true or false, but films are too complex. They have too many ingredients.
Sometimes a director is making three films. Perhaps he is shooting a film in Madras and a film in Bombay and he can't leave Madras as some shooting has to be done, so he directs by telephone. The shooting takes place. On schedule.
Some films really do take years to get going, but I'd say that most of the films I want to do are slightly smaller projects. Some could be sketches. They're not all oil paintings.
I was concerned about that, because I've always been so specific about doing independent films, but I've never done anything that's so genuinely and ridiculously fun. And that's a great thing, for me to discover that that's possible.
Music, as many people have said, is the universal language. Of course points are made which make you think about things, but ultimately it makes you feel. And that's why people remember more songs that have meant something during their life than films. They start to define periods in your life, and that's kind of the beauty of it.
A few words of Hindi appear here or there, but it's all Urdu. I feel that if the popular culture, which is what Hindi films are, uses Urdu, it's not going to diminish.
It was important that I got my own voice out there in the world. I'd used it on other people's films, collaborated, and I thought, 'You know, I can do this myself.' That was more important than anything else.
