I love the stage. It’s terrifying in a way that film and television is not. When you’re about to go out, and you’re adrenaline just gets out of control, and that can be really daunting.
I am a trained actor and an alumnus of the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII).
Jerry Bruckheimer really is an executive producer, who obviously is the most successful producer in the history of film and television.
I definitely am drawn to strong females who are successful, smart women because I am a woman like that. I think it’s important to portray those kinds of women on film and television.
I think film and television are really a director’s medium, whereas theatre is the actor’s medium.
CAA has a great history of representing fantastic talent, many of whom are my heroes in film and television.
There are so many people in film and television that get between a performer and the audience, and that’s frustrating.
I was among the first batch of the students to graduate from the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) in Pune in 1966, but it wasn’t my passport to Bollywood. At that time, no one understood that it is possible to learn acting in an institute.
When ’36 Chowringhee Lane’ was released in 1981, I was a student of the Film and Television Institute of Tamil Nadu. Everyone who had seen the film was very impressed with its flawless direction and acting. But we, cinematography students, were stunned by the visual style, which was truly international.
I didn’t dream of being in television or film. But then I got married pretty young and had children, and I wanted to feed the children, so I worked a lot of film and television.
Having written for film and television, I had little interest in turning ‘The Good Father’ into a Hollywood thriller. I was writing a novel, and novels demand that the writer goes deeper, both emotionally and thematically.
There’s a positive side to film and television, the sense of feeding into the theater… Your fans will follow you, hopefully, and be open-minded to see you play other things and experience other stories you want to tell.
A lot of my work, the subject is film and television itself, and history, and how that kind of coincides with larger cultural history and memory.
I want to do everything. I just want variety and longevity. I’ve never filmed a movie before, I want to do that. I want to come back to theater at some point. But I was in New York for like ten years, grinding. I’m ready to be in L.A. for a little while, and really experience film and television.
In musical theater you have to be very big and very animated, while film and television are more toned down.
I do miss sometimes being onstage, because when I do film and television, it’s usually so brief and funny.
Doing film and television demands a kind of simplicity. If you think something differently, the camera will pick it up.
Naseer Sir taught me while I was a student at the Film and Television Institute of India. Anything I know about acting is thanks to him.
My plan is, I’m in the process of creating a production company called Tall Girls productions. I want to be doing both film and television. I’ll never leave television. I just love working in it too much.
I wonder: Would there be a black president if people hadn’t already begun imagining, through film and television, that a black man is president? It’s self-actualization.
I just wanted to do it all. Film and television was so strange to me because I didn’t grow up in the business, I didn’t know anything about it, and I had never been on set before. But, from the minute I got on set and did ‘Old School,’ I was like, ‘I want to do this!’
I think it’d be cool to be in film and television, but I never thought that would happen.
When I moved out to Los Angeles to get some film and television work, and couldn’t get any… I became a little isolated, a little terrified, and it’s a good place to get writing, because you’re so bored. So I wrote a few screenplays, and people notice those.
I started in theatre, moved into film and television, and started doing voice work, which is funny because after a long time in film and television, you forget how much you rely on just a simple look on your face.
I think theater is very much my natural home. But the truth is that the older I’ve got, and the more I’ve written film and television, I find it incredibly hard to write theater.
For film and television, it’s interesting how fans feel that their particular ways of manifesting their affections are the correct ones. It’s not just about being a fan, it’s about how you perform your fandom. That’s always been interesting to me.
Only a niche section of parents allow their children to take up courses on film and television.
The great thing about doing a play is you get this rehearsal period, which you don’t get with most film and television roles.
Culture is this thing that exists apart from our real life but is something we all have tacitly agreed to in America. And what film and television do, particularly in this country, is lay out the characters involved in this invisible agreement and dictate who and what can participate.
Sometimes in film and television, I don’t have the opportunity to play roles that really stretch and challenge me.
When I was 24, I went back to the academic life and did a degree in film and television at Brunel University.
I wanted to be a film and television writer and producer.
That is a big danger, losing your inspiration. When I work in film and television I try to do each take a little differently. I never want to do the same thing twice, because then you’re not being spontaneous, you’re just recreating something.
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