I never feel any pressure about a film. What is meant to happen will happen. I have seen failure as well as success several times.
I come from an everyday middle class family in India. The film industry reached us only through our television sets and cinema halls.
The beauty of doing film is that you construct whatever you do block by block and you can build something that will stay.
Every film may not be appropriate for a theatrical release, and the theatrical business is not a very good business for anybody except the distributor.
The business is so international now; you'll be working on an American film, and you'll start chatting to someone, and it's like: 'Oh, you're English, too.'
I got a chance to work with Mel Brooks on two of his films: Silent Movie and High Anxiety.
I do not consider myself a feminist. I do not believe that by doing female-oriented films that depict a woman fighting the system, we can change the system.
If you really want to see something scary, turn on the nightly news. To me, for people to say 'look at the films' is ludicrous. The world we live in needs to change.
Every time I hear, Cut. Print, something cold and electrical goes off in my head, because I'm never going to change that film.
A film seeking to create change on a difficult issue should not try to provide a definitive historical overview, nor present an op-ed style argument.
Certainly Amadeus because it was a very powerful time for me, we filmed it in the Czech Republic at a time of lots of social and political change going on in that part of the world.
I've always thought photography was a bit of an adventure, so to come home with the film, develop it, then look at the results has more of a sense of excitement.
I'm purely most happy on a film or television set. That's where I feel I am home.
Now having said that, I realize that releasing a film in the real world is like trying to get General Motors to release a handmade car.
I loved theatre and film when I was growing up in Harpenden, Hertfordshire. My mum's a reflexologist and my dad's a corporate financier.
It never occurred to me that I'd be on a television show or in feature films but when those came into play my dreams changed along the way.
I'd like to widen my education. I'd definitely like to widen my film range. I mean, I'd love to do some theater.
Film is something that came later into my life. I had a Jesuit education, and I consider acting and the theater as kind of a calling - a vocation.
The key is working with great directors. A film is so many different people and all their talents, but particularly the directors, because of the idiosyncrasies of that person.
I looked back on the roaring Twenties, with its jazz, 'Great Gatsby' and the pre-Code films as a party I had somehow managed to miss.
Television in the last few years has been where all the great writers are going. TV now is what indie film used to be.
