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Imagine if I'd said, 'I have to be the best actress - I want that and nothing else.' I never would have directed. I never would have produced. I never would have done a beauty line. I would have just worried about getting a job or been frustrated that I wasn't getting the job that I wanted. I was ready to be a businesswoman.
I always wanted to live the lives of different people, portray characters that are different from me. But I could have done that in front of a mirror, also, I didn't need to do films for that. At the end of the day, it's this fame, recognition, popularity, the love and appreciation you get from your audience that drives you.
To each his own, but I just think that we women have a certain body type. As Indian women, we have a beautiful body type. And I believe in the celebration of curves. Whether it's Salma Hayek, Penelope Cruz, Zeenat Aman or Shilpa Shetty, they are very curvaceous and beautiful. I don't know why anyone would want to fight that.
I used humor to avoid being picked on as a kid. Or I would try and make my parents laugh, so I wouldn't get in trouble. But as a kid, I would watch Flip Wilson and I would memorize his whole routine, listen to Bill Cosby's records constantly, Steve Martin, Carol Burnett, Lucille Ball. I just drank that stuff up and loved it.
Life is all about evolution. What looks like a mistake to others has been a milestone in my life. Even if people have betrayed me, even if my heart was broken, even if people misunderstood or judged me, I have learned from these incidents. We are human and we make mistakes, but learning from them is what makes the difference.
After my kids were born I found myself incorporating my photography into different art endeavors and from there it just blossomed. I have always had to have an outlet for my creativity and when my life became more about raising my family than the bright lights of show business exploring my photo art was a great outlet for me.
I was home-schooled. My mom wasn't a fan of public school systems. She was scared of letting me go. So, she home-schooled my siblings and I, and she was desperately trying to find something for me to do, for an extracurricular. She was trying to socialize me, so she put me in community theater and I was instantly taken by it.
'True Blood' is shot on film. It's more like a movie, and they take more days to shoot it, plus it has an hour of content. 'The Good Wife' is network. They're shooting on HD. It moves quicker and they only have forty minutes of content instead of a full hour. Not to mention the difference of shooting, you know, rated-R stuff!
I was never a pretty girl, so I wasn't the one to get the boy. I used to cast myself as a good sport. Sometimes I wonder if I do that too much with roles I play, because if I'm absolutely truthful, I quite like being the best friend, or the supporting role, and actually I ought to gear-change and make myself the leading role.
Every time I do a play, it's as if I've never done one before. I'm always confused. I always am convinced I'm going to be fired. I'm like, 'I don't remember how to act. I don't know how to do this.' And, it's just a very slow process, and then, all of a sudden, it's just there one day. I still don't understand how it happens.
I auditioned for this agency. I got an advertisement first, and then something else, which I got fired from. It was soul-destroying. And then the next thing I got, I thought was going to be my big break, and they cut the role. It was only the year that I started auditioning for 'Star Wars' when I really started getting roles.
But America was built by optimists. Optimists like my friend Amanda, who recently started a small business. When she went to buy her website address-her first and last name-she found that someone already owned it, but wasn't using it. So my friend emailed the owner of the site to ask if she could buy it. The owner wrote back.
When I am doing things around the house - when I'm decorating, setting up furniture, putting out a vase of flowers, lighting my candles, my mind is always thinking, "What do I need to do to make this space peaceful and restful and comfortable so that when people walk into it, aesthetically they're heightened and enlightened?"
The reason I always loved 'The Omen' so much, and what has always been scariest to me, is anything to do with God. Anything to do with God is quite frightening because fear is something that's very much expressed in a church environment, and I grew up in one. And the fear of God was very much instilled me at a very young age.
The funniest people I know were, not necessarily troubled, but had a harder time in school or were shy or picked on or something like that. I think that you rely on it. Well, I don't think I'm cute and no one wants to hang out with me - I'd better start trying to make people laugh. I think there's an element of that in there.
I am mean; I'm nasty at times. I don't feel like talking to people at times. When I am in a bad mood and have had a really awful day, don't come in my face because I am not tolerant and I am not a goddess; I can't handle it after a point. I am going to get up, and I am going to scream, and I am going to say bad things to you.
I used to wish I would be a painter or a violinist, where maybe I wouldn't need to travel as much. Or maybe if I were a writer, I wouldn't need to travel as much. It's the travel that kind of killed me. And the hours. I always pictured if I were a painter you could make your own hours maybe... work after the kids were asleep.
I was the executer of our mother's trust. She asked me to hold onto the house for 10 years and then sell it. I think that was because it was so hard to face dying and think of all her most prized possessions no longer being a part of our lives as well. Business wise, it was a terrible investment, because we were losing money.
The times in which we're currently living unfortunately, our great leader [George W. Bush] is such a disaster and the entire country is in disastrous shape because of him. It's very frightening, actually, to think that this country has become what it's become and that so many people voted for a man like that. It's terrifying.
Women need to be empowered through the strongest tool - education. They don't need to be subservient to anyone, but at the same time, men must change their mindset towards women. If they are more respectful towards them, then things will change at the grassroots level. It will happen slowly, but everyone has to move together.
It's a notion that career-oriented women often neglect their families. But we should cut them some flak; these women are doing everything for the sake of family so that it progresses. I believe when kids see their mothers working hard, they take up responsibilities at home and are far more well-turned out than other children.
Of all the forms of exercise that I have done, Power Plate® training is the most concise. If I start my session at 9.30am, I know I can be at my desk by 10.15am and I can even fit in a workout before rehearsals. Power Plate® exercise is not at all intimidating, and I know that in a short session I have had a complete workout.
If you only took on roles that had the same qualities, then I suppose it might make a critic feel better, if he can see some kind of bedrock. Perhaps that's the old definition of a star, someone who's always going to come up with the same goods. But it intimates limitation to me and I don't want to think of the job like that.
The writing is the springboard for your intuitive stuff and then you see, maybe a colour of what you want to achieve. Then you bring in the technique you've learnt. But when you're on film, you're not always in control of that. That's what makes me believe in a kind of collective unconscious, a sort of experience you draw on.
My grandmother had a picture of herself as a close-lipped, silent, reserved individual without curiosity, who never asked personal questions. Actually, of course, she was a talkative, jolly, interminably curious woman, who loved people, and who enjoyed the personal details of their lives almost as much as they did themselves.
When I grew up in America, I didn't see anyone who looked like me on TV. I feel overwhelmed with the things that people have said to me. When I meet Indian Americans who've lived here all their lives, it's overwhelming people holding me and crying. Someone said to me, 'Thank you for making us relevant.' It's such a big thing.
I just want to be at peace with myself, personally and professionally. I want to lead my life the way I want to without having to worry about what the other person may be thinking. Professionally again, I would like to be able to just do films that I want to without having to explain my reasons to my friends, family and fans.
I received so many hate letters when I breast-fed a starving baby in Africa. I was in Sierra Leone in 2009 and I was weaning my child at that time - she was not there with me. There was a hungry baby who was crying because his mother had no milk, and I thought, 'Why throw away my milk if I can give it to a baby who needs it?'
I visualise what I want through meditation. The process of meditating is a great way of making sure I have my priorities sorted. It's not about money - I focus on my career and the kind of film projects I want to do. Film-making is a passion for me, and my mantra is that you should do what you love, and the money will follow.
Hollywood always had a streak of the totalitarian in just about everything it did. The old moguls were essentially hard-fisted authoritarians who had created a system of linked dictatorships to control the creative people. We were supposed to be the children; mad, tempestuous, brilliant, talented, not terribly smart children.
My parents find me hilarious. They don't pull me up for anything because I'm a good daughter. I stay at home, don't party too much, people don't talk about my affairs or that I am unprofessional. In fact, people tell my parents that I'm so well-brought up. Yes, I tend to shoot my mouth off, but they don't pull me up for that.
I grew up in this industry. I'm a third generation actor, and I believe strongly that life and career are two different things. Career is inside my life. I'm also a photographer, a pianist, and lots of different things, so my life consists of so many different elements that there are moments when I have to step away and be me.
All through my life, I didn't really consider my eyes at all, and then I became an actress. It's great, I guess. They're just in my face, and one is green and one is blue. It's different, and I'm definitely a proponent of being different in any way you can in life, so I guess if you're born a bit different that's a good thing.
After my kids were born I found myself incorporating my photography into different art endeavours and from there it just blossomed. I have always had to have an outlet for my creativity and when my life became more about raising my family than the bright lights of show business exploring my photo art was a great outlet for me.
From when I was a really small girl on, I would pick every fabric, every color on the walls, and I was always redecorating. Like once every couple of months I would redecorate my room. I had a full wall that was all collage - the entire wall - when I was in junior high. And then it would kind of morph with me as I was growing.
The idea of being at home and picking up kids from school and cooking dinner and then the husband comes home - there's something that seems really nice to me 'cause I never had that growing up. And it seems so enticing. But in my mind, I'm like, 'Well, I'll just play that in a movie and go about my own life, bizarre as it is.'
My parents have been very supportive, in fact, it was my mother who identified that what I was going through was actually depression. My family and friends never let me feel as if something was wrong with me. They made me feel that what I was going through was okay. They supported my decision to take medication for depression.
I never have more than one bag at a time. I think one is already quite enough. Also, I hate changing bags, so I never have the thing of having ten bags. Any bag that's with me will take the same course as I will. It will take the same airplanes and will be squashed in the same way and will be used as a cushion in the airports.
Another thing I also recommend is washing your face with white towels, little white towels instead of your hands. Other towels have dye in them and, with water on them, I just don't mess around with that. This way you're not getting your hands back on your dirty face as you're washing it. You're going to see what's coming off.
I have a rule now that I can only watch a movie twice. By the third time I was watching 'The Guest,' I was hating everything about it, but the first time, I loved it. The first time you watch it, you watch it as a whole. And the second time, I think you can learn a lot. By the third time, you are just picking everything apart.
So often, we're expected to maintain some sort of standard - that won't get you where you need to go. One of the most daring things I've done is drop out of graduate school. I had no job, but something inside me was saying, 'Go! Be in the world!' I had to listen to myself, and it worked out. I still think, 'Who was that girl?'
God has created you and be proud of it. Don't hide from your age. Don't lie about it. Don't be ashamed of it and don't let nobody make you feel ashamed because you're aging in the world. It's a privilege. God has blessed you. Michael Jackson, Prince, Whitney, they'll never know what it's like to be 60. They'll never know that.
I'm character-driven. If it's a great character and something different; because I find that a lot of the times you do get pigeon-holed, you do get the same characters over and over again because that's what producers are comfortable with. They've seen you do it, they know you can do it. I'm kind of getting a little stir crazy.
I'm not saying standardized tests are the worst ever, but there's an in-between and I don't think we're there yet. That's what I mean when I say I have an issue with it. There's no way a kid can learn in a class with 40 to 45 people. I had the power to get out of that system and pursue things that I wanted to do and I did that.
I never thought about how I didn't have a cell phone or I'm in 2011. I was just so happy to be able to be a character in the 30s and there are these actresses that I really liked in the 40s, 50s and 60s in American movies that I've seen since I was a little girl. But you don't really think like that when you prepare for a role.
When people visit me at autograph conventions and signings, they always say, 'You just don't know how you scared me!' These people are grown up. They say, 'When I was a kid, I just couldn't sleep at night.' Sometimes they will have babies with them. And they give me their babies, and they take pictures of me holding their baby.
I trained with the FBI in Portland and I also had many conversations with female FBI agents in Los Angeles, as well. That was again something that also came in very handy for Basic, because I'd learned already how to handle a gun and how to behave just physically when you're in a situation, a threat. That was very good to know.
I was never a cheerleader, but one of my very close friends was, and she is the one that taught me to do my first cartwheel. I always thought they were so talented and focused, and now that I've had the honor to walk in their shoes for a moment, my respect for their flexibility, skill, and resilience has increased tremendously.
I've done many, many French movies and many, many English movies. I think it frees something when you don't talk in your mother language, but I also think you withdraw something as well. I'm a French actress, and sometimes I speak in English-speaking roles. For me, being an actress was always being a traveler. It goes together.
Green screen, you know, it's been interesting, it's my first time to ever work with green screen technology, and it's, sometimes it can be really boring because you're like wow, I've got to really imagine all of this stuff around me. But it's low maintenance, which is nice, um, and it's not as hard as I thought it would be, so.