I had no ambitions to become an actor, whatsoever. I was just waiting for my films to get made and some friends of mine, out of the kindness of their hearts, because I was sitting around doing nothing, started casting me in small roles and the roles got bigger.
I started doing American films and TV before Priyanka, but of course I do small roles in big films, and I don't have the publicity machine working around me.
You have to get out of your comfort zone in order to grow. And as an actor, you don't become Meryl Streep by doing the same type of comedy. You get there by being challenged. And unfortunately, there's a lack of roles for women of color, so you actually have to be the engineer creating some of those roles.
You've heard the phrase 'There are no small roles, just small actors?' Well, I kind of disagree. There are small roles, but when you get a lot of them in a row, you can become a pretty successful actress, and that's what I've done.
There aren't as many roles, and I think there's a lack of openness in casting an Asian character in a leading role or unless they're a stereotype. It's been hard. I've been able to play some non-stereotypical roles, which is great, but I have a lot of Asian actor friends who are struggling.
For a long time, way back in the โ30s and โ40s, there were fabulous female roles. Bette Davis and all those people had incredible, great roles. After World War II, something happened where it was not only "get out of the factories," but "get out of the movies." That's when women's roles started to really [change].
Some actors come to casting and ask me, "Didn't you see my previous roles?" We do not work with actors like this. Their previous roles do not matter; I need the actual work with an actor in this particular character that has been written in our script. What matters is flexibility, believability and efficiency of an actor.
When I was 8, my dad asked me if I wanted to audition, just for fun. I did just a little short film, and I liked it. I just kept doing it, and then I started getting bigger auditions for bigger roles.
I didn't want to be around anybody because it was just too much for my brain. But, as an actress, you hope you get those meaty roles that push you into the extremities of that psychology. I like doing independent films because there's more room for you to be creative, and the director allowed me to just go wherever I needed to go. It was emotional. I had to cry a lot.
I've become really good at turning down the boring, pretty girl roles, the trophy wife, supermodel, beautiful girlfriend roles. I mean, playing somebody who's perfect holds no allure for me, whatsoever. It's just boring.
I don't want to play father roles. And I use father roles figuratively for roles that are just hanging around... don't want to be a piece of furniture in films.
I won't do roles that are dirty, full of double meaning dialogues and vulgar gestures. Though such roles had made me a star, my conscience was against doing such scenes.
I was doing specialisation in advertising. I had no interest in acting. One of my friends, who was doing specialisation in films, made a short film casting me. Luckily, I got a break, and my acting career took off.
I started in comedy when I first started as an actor on stage and doing improvisational theater and stuff like that. So a lot of people who know me know that sort of side of me. But I got the roles that I got as an young actor kind of steered me in a different direction, which were, at times, darker characters. And so comedy was not something that came easy for people to think of my in those terms.
All the roles are for boys. The girls' roles are either small or all the same. There's just nothing interesting.
I'm a character actor and that's what I do. All the roles that I've had have been mainly support roles, because character actors don't usually get the lead in movies. It rarely happens.
I'm an actor and I am looking for roles where I can continue to evolve, and things that are challenging. I gravitate to the roles, not necessarily television or film. It's just the fact that, for me, the most interesting roles have been in television.