I have an Indian father, and when you grow up in a house with an Indian father, culturally, that's what becomes dominant in the house. So that's the tradition we grew up with.
I believe in doing a nude scene only when I trust the director.
I've always wanted to do an Indian film, but I didn't want to come to India and pretend that I could play an average Bombay girl.
It was strange wearing the scarf and the hijab until I got used to it.
I can speak Hindi, but I can't sustain it over a whole movie.
In America, they often don't know where I am from. The important point is the audience should not be able see through it. It should be so natural that your close friends may even think that you are not a great actor.
My parents are really open-minded, but with their own daughter, it's not the same thing.
Left to myself, I would only play an Indian. But the reality was that there were hardly any Indian characters I could play in the films made in England and Hollywood. So I had to learn how to disappear into a variety of characters.
I go about doing my work passionately.
There is this film called 'La Femme Nikita.' I want to play something like that. This woman with a gun in her hand but with tears in her eyes. I would love to play that kind of vulnerability on screen.
See, all actors pretend. I enjoy that pretence. I don't wear heels in real life, but if it is for a character, I love to get into the traits of the person I am playing.
People have this impression that once you move to America, that becomes your interest. But I never moved to Los Angeles; I stayed in New York because I do theatre, so my aim is not just Hollywood.
I am interested in independent cinema and theatre, and they don't make news.
The conventional Indian movie industry is not for me: I cannot dance around trees or the water-fountain.
After a two-year stint at Cheek by Jowl theatre company in London, I put all my energies into breaking into New York's theatre scene. It took me eight years to build enough to play lead roles.
People are always asking me if the industry is changing, and my answer is always that it is changing only as much as we are. Many South Asian actors complain about being pigeonholed into playing terrorists and cab drivers, but it's time that we stop talking about it. The industry will always say 'No' till we have enough to convince them.
I wanted to move between film and theater - I never felt like I fit into TV. And I'm very anti-TV, like, 'I'm never going to do TV,' but also, TV didn't want me either, so it was kind of perfect. And then, of course, cable happened, and suddenly it was like, 'Oh, I could do that kind of stuff.'
The first time I put on the hijab, it felt weird, like I was wearing a scuba-diving suit kind of thing.
A few years ago, I got cast as a white boy in an off-Broadway play. So not only was it colour-blind, it was gender-blind as well. That would never happen in film.
When you have a good director, it's just wonderful.
