Balancing my career between two industries has never been an issue. I started with a Telugu film and have a soft corner for the south industry, though I've grown up speaking Hindi. I don't think language can be a barrier when it comes to acting. And, since I come from a theatre background, I'm used to memorizing my lines.
A stylist understands our body language; they know what works and what doesn't. I'm happy this concept has caught on in the South film industry.
Language is not a barrier, specially Hindi. It is the only language I read, write and speak in and so it is far easier than South Indian languages.
Language doesn't seem to be a barrier for me to do films in the south.
We have four good film industries in the south and language for us is no barrier.
I'm nuts about the South - the people, the language, the food, the land, the stories and writers that come from there - but it's hard to know whether I'll use it as a location again.
When I entered Bollywood, I didn't have any advantage over anyone. I didn't know how to act, I was not from the industry, I didn't know the language, and I didn't know how to dance. So, whatever films I was getting, I was just taking them up.
Babies and language are the essential ingredients of civilization, and speakers of language no more know where it came from than babies know where they come from.
I'm from South Carolina, so I know what it's like to be accused of being a conservative from the South. And I know that to some people that means more than you're a conservative from the South.
When you start talking about the known knowns and the unknown unknowns, you're thrown into a crazy meta-level discussion. Do I know what I know, do I know what I don't know, do I know what I don't know I don't know. It becomes a strange, Lewis Carroll - like nursery rhyme.
When I think about the auto-industry and how it was one of the industries that brought all of these black men from the South to Michigan and other places to make more money than they could ever make in the cotton fields or the agricultural world of the South... what's happening now is all of that is closing down, and we know that it's going to reopen in Southern places, focusing on Mexican and other migrant workers to come and work cheaply and get none of the benefits.
As we read a text in our own language, the text itself becomes a barrier.
If you want to deliver as an actor, you need to know the language. If you don't know what you are mouthing, how will you perform? For me, it is important to know the language.
Everybody now admits that apartheid was wrong, and all I did was tell the people who wanted to know where I come from how we lived in South Africa. I just told the world the truth. And if my truth then becomes political, I can't do anything about that.
I feel like I'm a New Yorker to the bone. But there is a lot of the South in me. I know there is a lot of the South in my mannerisms. There's a lot of the South in my expectations of other people and how people treat each other. There's a lot of the South in the way I speak, but it could never be home.
You know, bigotry isn't relevant to just the South. It never was. But I'm very grateful that I don't know what it's like from experience.