My father, a Russian translator, wanted to distinguish me by calling me Misha, the Russian diminutive of his name, Michael. My name and work as a writer specialising in the Balkans has created a myth that I have Slavic connections, but actually I am ...
I kept on trying to use so many media and ideas in my work because our horizon is so vast and Indian culture is so rich that I think what we are today, culturally, we have a unique position and I don't think one lifetime is enough to encompass it.
I think it's a little simplistic to explain a work through the psychology of its author. In other words, that Haneke has emotional problems, so I don't have to take his films seriously. By using this argument, the viewer retreats from the challenges ...
In some cases we've been building tools that are specific to Linux for the desktop, and they only work on Linux, but I see two major projects that are wildly, wildly successful: Mozilla and OpenOffice, and those two programs are cross platform.
When you try on something, you have to ask yourself, 'How many ways could I wear this? Could I wear it to work? To dinner or drinks? Will it span the seasons' If you have to think too hard about those questions, then skip it.
I have just gone over my comet computations again, and it is humiliating to perceive how very little more I know than I did seven years ago when I first did this kind of work.
I actually don't pay a lot of attention to the movie 'industry'... I just do the work when I get it. I never considered anything I was in, or did, as a possible breakthrough for me. I have advised other actors not to expect anything. Expecting a 'bre...
I somehow sensed when I was a teenager that I wanted to do my own work. I was quite clear that I didn't want to be an interpretative kind of artist. I had an intuition about wanting to create my own form, in one way or another, whatever that would be...
It's just as important to work on the little muscle groups as well as the big muscle groups. People, when they train, go to gyms. I call them 'nightclub bodies' - ginormous up top, and legs are little sticks. You see a lot of people, and they forget ...
Acting's an odd profession for a young person; it's so extreme. You work, and the conditions are tough and the process is so immersive, and then it stops, and then there's nothing. So you have to find ways of making you feel productive when you're no...
Most of the people who are engaged in the subjects that I look into are pretty interesting. Whether its sex researchers or someone who's devoted their career to saliva or somebody who does research with cadavers, there's an inherent fascination in th...
My parents, Mary Agnes Smith and Rowland Smith, both had to work since their early teens, she in the holiday boarding house of her mother and he in his father's market garden in Marton Moss, a village on the south side of Blackpool, just north of Sai...
I have a small Thai boy who dresses me and every year I let him pick what campaign I am going to work on. It saves me having to worry about it and, bless him, it makes him feel involved in the struggle for global liberation.
Yet we act as if simple cause and effect is at work. We push to find the one simple reason things have gone wrong. We look for the one action, or the one person, that created this mess. As soon as we find someone to blame, we act as if we've solved t...
For me now, it's about what you would write and what you wouldn't write, and that's how I select what I am going to do. It can be quite nice being brought a concept by a studio for me to work on.
I feel incredibly lucky at this moment in my career to get paid to do basically exactly what I always wanted to do. I appreciate that in general. But you know, like any job, a job is a job, and there are days that are going to be boring, or you have ...
As a black actress you've got to work doubly hard. But it doesn't ever get me to the point where I give up on myself. It just motivates me to be more prepared, focus and disciplined. That's why I care so much about doing black films and making sure t...
Part of the reason for moving to New York was the sense that it just didn't matter how much work I did in England, I continued to be seen simply as a Redgrave. I did feel I could be who I am in New York and we all like to feel appreciated.
My weaknesses are my jumps. The reason is that although I land them in practice, when I actually compete or perform, I should let my body go and stabilize my mind better. Also, I need to work on not letting negative thoughts and emotions get to me on...
Culture is mix. Culture means a mix of things from other sources. And my town, Istanbul, was this kind of mix. Istanbul, in fact, and my work, is a testimony to the fact that East and West combine cultural gracefully, or sometimes in an anarchic way,...
It's a shame how a lot of actors use theater as a stepping stone to film and television work; I think it shouldn't be treated that way. Maybe it's narcissism or something. I think we should always go back to it. I try and do a play a year, and I thin...
