I worked in a software company in Bangalore and made short films during weekends. I learnt the basics during a one-day workshop called Film Camp Sanjay Nambiar.
To me, film is a religion. I don’t expect to get paid to make it, but I do expect total dedication.
I adore book-to-film adaptations when they’re done well, and I’m more lenient than many readers when it comes to what counts as ‘done well.’ For me, the most important thing is that the film maintains the spirit of the original book.
I think it’s a different experience for plus-size women in film and television to get clothes for events. It’s just not as welcoming for us to get cool clothes that are, like, equal in glamour, in style, to what, I am going to say, ‘small size’ co-stars get to wear.
The only place that I’d be worried about being typecast is the independent film world.
Choosing location is integral to the film: in essence, another character.
I take a few pictures a week, but the best part is waiting for my film to be developed. The suspense is exciting, and the reward is great.
It’s especially gratifying to have done a film like ‘Eight Men Out’ because it’s hard not to have fun when there are so many bats and balls around.
It was only after Pather Panchali had some success at home that I decided to do a second part. But I didn’t want to do the same kind of film again, so I made a musical.
My favorite part of the film business is the research part, with the access we get from people who are excited to be involved and the things we get to see and do, which we’re not normally going to get in everyday life.
I’ve never made a film that I didn’t believe in, you know? However the picture turns out, I’ve always given everything to it. That’s kind of how I approach life. I can’t help it. There’s no part-way with me on anything in any area of my life.
‘Bagdad Cafe’ was a film that changed many, many people’s lives… how they saw themselves and how they looked at their life situation. I thought I made a little movie. All the mail that I get is about how it changed lives, and that’s wonderful.
Film spectators are quiet vampires.
I suffer much less than many of my colleagues. I am perfectly able to go to Australia and film within three hours of arrival.
Sword fighting in film is not about how good the fighter is, but how good the actor receiving the blows is.
I’m still very critical of myself in film.
When I left college, I though that I would be immediately embraced by the film world and instead found myself sitting in a squat for three years not knowing what to do with my life.
Listen, anybody who has a film festival has the right to show what they want.
I always gravitate towards the independent side of things, just because those are the stories I always fall in love with, but you don’t really get paid, and living in Los Angeles is expensive, and I have a mortgage to pay. So it’s good to jump onto a studio film and then in all my other time do small passion projects.
I’ve never done a film before where every single person in the audience knows the ending. I mean suspense, twists are almost impossible these days. People are blogging your endings from their cinema seats.
In any film there’s always a historical implication.
I wish I had gone to Cannes with a film, but I had gone there for L’Oreal Pakistan. I cannot tell you the people that I was around, from Helen Mirren to Jane Fonda. It was a proud moment on the red carpet when they announced my name and said ‘Mahira Khan from Pakistan.’
It feels so good to be able to be part of an action flick like ‘The Raid’ and to read the rave reviews in a number of film festivals.
Language is much closer to film than painting is.
When ‘Fitoor’ didn’t work, it affected me a lot. It hurts when a film doesn’t do well.
I have no ambitions at all! I have none… seriously. I want to be a good father. I want to be a good husband. I want to be a good son, a good brother, a good family member. I don’t have any ambition to direct a film or write a play. I like acting.
I love wearing Converse or Vans and wear a lot of bombers or denim jackets. I’m also a bit of loser, so wear a lot of film and band T-shirts. My friends say that I look like a cartoon character because I’m always wearing the same kind of stuff.
A film – especially when it’s a personal film – is going to hit somebody or it’s not. There’s nothing you can do about it.
I am happy that I am back and with a great project like ‘Vicky Donor.’ I have had a hard time in the past with ‘Johnny Mastana’ getting stuck but I hope this film brings positiveness into my life.
I’d even say it’s a realistic film because that’s the way it happens in our heads; that was the idea.
There’s no wrong way to experience a film.
Let’s say there are things about ‘G.I. Joe’ that you specifically expect and some things that need to be in the film at certain points, whether it be relationships or certain costume aspects.
When I look at ‘Fallen Angels,’ I realize it is not a film that is truly about Hong Kong. It’s more like my Hong Kong fantasy. I want Hong Kong to be quiet, with less people.
I did some glamorous roles and even wore a bikini in the Telugu film ‘Drona,’ but the audience was aghast. Some said, ‘Please don’t ever wear a bikini again!’
There’s something magical still about it when I get in a darkroom, and you’ve shot a roll of film and you develop it and you look at your negatives, and there’s, like, imagery there. That always stuns me.
When I was making ‘Satya’, many people said that nobody would like to watch such dirty people. But, when the film worked, the same people said it was so real that they could actually smell it!
I keep every script from every film that I ever made because it’s like a workbook of that time in my life.
On a film set, where there is so much chaos, I find inner peace.
The writer must be a participant in the scene… like a film director who writes his own scripts, does his own camera work, and somehow manages to film himself in action, as the protagonist or at least the main character.
My wife Victoria Harwood was art director on ‘Far North,’ and she had designed my student film, ‘The Sheep Thief.’
I miss the sense of belonging on a film as much as I did on ‘Call Me By Your Name.’
I am just pitifully nostalgic. I can’t help but roll my eyes at myself frequently. I mean, I still shoot black-and-white film. And I am constantly reminiscing about the ‘good old days.’ I’m 28 years old. There haven’t even been that many ‘good old days.’ But still, I love to look back.
I wanna chase down Denzel Washington, Jamie Foxx, Will Smith. I would love to start my film career.
It is so exciting to get a phone call saying you’re going to be working on a Disney film.
Kubrick never explained the ending to us, or what his intentions were. He didn’t intend for it to be a predictable film.
I was never interested in being powerful or famous. But once I got to film school and learned about movies, I just fell in love with it. I didn’t care what kind of movies I made.
Storytelling is powerful; film particularly. We can know a lot of things intellectually, but humans really live on storytelling. Primarily with ourselves; we’re all stories of our own narrative.
You have to steal a lot. You have to have a criminal mentality to be a film director.
‘Pride’ is my first film with a happy ending. Before, I naively thought they were a cop-out, but now I’ve come to believe that happy endings and wish fulfilment are an incredibly important part of our cultural life.
If anyone has the opportunity to connect the dots and look at the directors I’ve worked with, from TV to film, there are some heavy hitters, from Taylor Hackford to John Singleton.
Ethiopia is engraved on my heart. I first went in 1973 because I heard of a terrible famine. They were denying it even as we got the film out. The coverage destroyed the emperor’s credibility.
When I’m making a film, I’m the audience.
Fear is a problem with film music and films; people want to be conventional, and there’s more commercialism today. If you are not daring in your art, you’re bankrupt.
Photography is a way of feeling, of touching, of loving. What you have caught on film is captured forever… it remembers little things, long after you have forgotten everything.
On a film set, where there is so much chaos, I find inner peace.
The area of teenage life is not necessarily rarefied; we’ve all gone through that period. It’s not as rarefied as a western or a space adventure or a gangster film, but it has its own dynamic.
My becoming a film actor was more a twist of tale than a chosen course because I dared not to think I could ever become an actor. I couldn’t even walk up on a stage and say ‘Thank you’ when we were to receive trophies at our sports meets at college.
I was born in Faridabad but brought up in Delhi and Mumbai. My father had been living hand-to-mouth and literally slept on railway platforms when he came to Mumbai for the first time to become a film singer. My parents were both singers; they sang together and fell in love due to their singing.
I think ‘The Color of Money’ was very instrumental in opening up other opportunities. People started to recognize me as an artist after that film. And then, after I did ‘Bird,’ it was more solidified.
