Top 35 Neeraj Kabi Quotes

I like to enter my characters through a physical form first. The first thing I find is the regime of the character – when he wakes up tomorrow, what activities does this person engage in – that’s my entry point. Once I get that, then it becomes easy for me.

The struggle is to sustain the quality. When I look at my work and the kind of responses I’m blessed with, I feel I need to do so much more.

If I get a call from Imtiaz Ali or Zoya Akhtar to star in their films, I won’t think twice.

You have to train yourself, think, contemplate, and work on your craft every day.

Avenues opened right after I did ‘Ship of Thesus’ but doing films where there is big money involved or has big stars involved is not the reason I came to Mumbai.

I am not against doing commercial cinema at all.

I never improvise. I create the character and transform into it.

To be honest, making films is so expensive and their shelf life is limited. On the web, content remains… you can watch it after five, eight, 10 years… There’s a huge audience and content on the web is accessible at the click of a phone.

In ‘Talvar’, my character loses his daughter and it was quite an intense role. I had to concentrate and I would request all the unit members to stay silent before the take.

I do not like to label the characters I am doing or even myself as a particular type of actor. I try to do different kind of roles which are not the same ‘hero’ or ‘villain’ kind.

In all these years of doing theatre, I’ve been a very physical performer – physically demonstrative, yet sticking to the realism of the piece.

I do work on stage as an actor. I do films as well. Television, I haven’t done much.

I remember watching ‘The Lunchbox’ that released around the same time ‘Ship Of Theseus’. Both films found space in the independent cinema circuit. But at a personal level, ‘The Lunchbox’ is one of the favourite films.

There’s a lot of opportunity on the web that you couldn’t imagine some years ago. People are experimenting at a fast rate.

I don’t discuss my journey in the Hindi film industry since it is something personal to me.

For me, theatre and cinema are both pillars of an actor’s life; I’d feel very half-baked if I was only doing one and not the other.

I was waiting for a good show on Amazon and ‘Paatal Lok’ had all of it – good script, story, and cast. It joined all the dots beautifully.

Yes, I play a cop in Amit Kumar’s ‘Monsoon Shootout’ where Nawazuddin Siddiqui plays the villain.

The whole process of acting is transformation. What is your power, quality and level of transformation, define you as an actor.

I like to play Gandhi, but I’ve got tired of it, though not bored of it. I have to go through the physicality of losing weight.

Empathy is much bigger than sympathy. When the character is empathised with, that means you have succeeded as an actor. So even if it’s a villain, the audiences don’t hate you… they understand why you have turned into a villain.

Money is very important to me, but its source is important too. As of now, I can say that I will never ever do films that demands me to sell my craft.

I have always stayed away from TV. It never made sense to me.

Adopting mannerisms is called mimicry. That is not a good way to do things. You don’t start to imitate somebody, the way he walks and talks, that is a very irrelevant element of acting.

I feel great when people like my work, but after a day or two, I don’t keep that in my head. I go back to working and training. I don’t rest on my laurels.

You have so many offers coming to you so as an actor it is all about finding which project to invest your energy in.

In most of our love stories the people are quite young in age. ‘Once Again’ is a love story about two mature people looking for companionship.

I don’t know if I can call myself the poster boy. But yes, I am fortunate that a lot of work that I did was on the web. It has definitely got me some really good roles and a great audience.

Actually, I came to Mumbai from Jamshedpur in 1991 to become an actor. I began searching for work and I was all alone and absolutely empty-handed, no craft and nobody that I knew.

My biggest inspiration has been life for me. Basic survival has been my biggest teacher. Surviving in Mumbai for so many years has been a huge ordeal.

I’ve always looked towards mainstream. Many offers have come but they’ve been the wrong kind of offers. They are not the right business decisions for me to take.

I didn’t want to get into any Amazon Prime Video show just like that. I was waiting for a big series to come where the script is good, the role is good and where there’s great talent.

When you are a journalist, you have a big responsibility towards your audience and it is important to respect that responsibility.

But I’m very keen to work with directors such as Imtiaz Ali, Zoya Akhtar, Farhan Akhtar, Vishal Bhardwaj, Abhishek Chaubey, Anurag Kashyap and Abhishek Kapoor.

I am confident that I am capable of leading projects, which are even complex.