I may be a star in the South, but when I go to Bollywood, I am a clean slate, a white paper. Whatever the director makes of me is what I will become for the audience.
In a big Bollywood romantic film, taking my shirt off and spreading the hand towards the mountain with dancers behind me are not my cup of tea.
For me, it is very important to believe in the kind of movies I do. 'Rang De Basanti' made me feel good about Indian cinema. The movie instilled in me a confidence so strong, that I wanted to be a part of the revolution in Bollywood.
I am greedy for both Hollywood and Bollywood. For me, Bollywood is not new, as it is something that I grow up on... I know the plot... stories and characters that are written and made. I haven't got the right opportunity to show my work in Bollywood.
Internationalism, illustrated by the Bolshevik and by the men to whom all countries are alike provided they can make money out of them, is to me repulsive.
I think I make films to help bolster and feed the part of me that wants to remain in a positive relationship with the world and to engage in it. So hopefully in non-sentimental ways, I'm trying to make something that helps make me happy.
The thing about me is that I'm very fortunate to have had the opportunities with Avenged Sevenfold in songwriting. I really think it's helped to bolster my guitar playing as well.
If Queen Elizabeth knighthooded me and I would get the title Sir Usain Bolt. That sounds very nice.
The script for what would eventually become my first graphic novel, 'Cairo,' sort of came to me in kind of a bolt of lightning within 24 hours of having moved to that city. Just a jumble of characters and narratives and interesting things that I was seeing and experiencing for the first time.
I came to Flatanger with a plan in my mind to bolt a really, really hard thing that would be beautiful and keep me motivated to try it for a long time, in some underdeveloped area.
I love nothing better than to get all the nuts and bolts out of the way - show up on time, with lines learned, clear on what the director expects of me, with my buttons buttoned and my jewelry on correctly - and then I completely commit to play acting.
When I first heard Nina Simone, her naked truth shocked me. Whenever she sang, it felt like lightning bolts in my soul. Every song was like a movie, a unique and very different vignette.
I connect with just plain old everyday people. Human behavior fascinates me, the people who are the nuts and bolts of this country who help hold up the world.
The original and very basic 'Law & Order' series has always seemed to me to be 100-percent exposition, with no filler, no pesky nuances and almost no background about the series' continuing characters - just the hard nuts and bolts of pure storytelling.
The original reason to start the project, which was that the Germans were a danger, started me off on a process of action, which was to try to develop this first system at Princeton and then at Los Alamos, to try to make the bomb work.
I sat next to a young woman on a plane once who bombarded me for five hours with how she had decided to be born again and so should I. I told her I was glad for her, but I hadn't used up being born the first time.
How irritating it must be for people, to be bombarded with me!
In the '50s, listening to Elvis and others on the radio in Bombay - it didn't feel alien. Noises made by a truck driver from Tupelo, Mississippi, seemed relevant to a middle-class kid growing up on the other side of the world. That has always fascinated me.
In writing 'The Satanic Verses,' I think I was writing for the first time from the whole of myself. The English part, the Indian part. The part of me that loves London, and the part that longs for Bombay. And at my typewriter, alone, I could indulge this.
Roja,' 'Bombay' and 'Dil Se' weren't planned as political films. It was a phase India was going through and these things affected me and found their way into my work.
