Ram Gopal Varma is a most noteworthy talent and has given us some very valuable iconic films. I enjoy working with him.
Whether the work that I do shall succeed or achieve critical acclaim is for the audience to decide.
Personally, when a controversy erupts, we decide first whether it requires clarification and, secondly, if it receives notice from authorities and the establishment, we submit responses to their queries.
I sometimes feel that I have been born to attract controversy.
Whatever I do becomes controversial.
Foreigners have no idea of the diversity of India and its culture. We hope to be able to give them a glimpse of that diversity.
My opening words to anybody I hire are, 'I'm an extremely vulnerable person.'
Everybody wants to live. But sometimes the body just gives up.
A lot of my fighting qualities I inherited from my parents. They set tremendous examples right through my life.
People ask me why it is that when I portray the 'angry young man' on screen, I really look angry. They reason that it is due to some suppression in my childhood. But, it's just that I can't help it; it's in my genes.
I guess I've been extremely keen on theatre, on getting on to the stage, taking on different roles, enacting vocations, personalities, people, situations, and I guess that's the interest that has driven me to work in movies.
My father is a poet. He's a literary giant of this country - writes in Hindi - and also quite unique because he has a Ph.D. in English Literature. He taught at Harvard University, which is one of the most prominent universities in the country.
I think 'Crouching Tiger' is a genre of its own, and it's extremely well done, and God bless them for it.
I felt that for 20 years, I was wooing the people of my country and asking them to like me as an actor, and when they liked me as an actor, I told them, 'Now, you like my politics.'
Rajeev Gandhi was prime minister. We've had a long family relationship with them. He asked me to fight an election, and I went ahead and did it. But I was not qualified as a politician, and I am not going back there again.
Please explain to me what being an icon is. How do you define it? I haven't been given a script. I don't know what the dialogues of an icon are.
I ask you, as a citizen, is it a crime to go to the temple? And if I am propagating superstition by going to the temple, then the whole country is propagating superstition.
I've accepted that I was a failure in politics. I was not qualified for the job.
I ended up in Parliament and soon discovered that emotion really doesn't have any place in politics. It's a much more intricate and complicated game, and I just didn't know how to play it.
If you represent a fantasy for the people who actually go to the cinema, they grab that and go with it; therefore, for the rest of their lives, they actually identify you with a certain thinking - a certain philosophy. There are many actors who want to pursue that same thought in real life as well, and that's perfectly acceptable.
