A Quote by Riya Sen

I feel Bengali directors have offered me characters which have a story to tell and not just impress people because of what I wear in the film. That's the kind of roles I want to do.
I want to do roles that provoke us to think differently or realise ourselves in a new light. Characters of women who have an interesting story to tell. I'd love to do a period film, an action film, a character study.
People think, 'You're an actor, you can afford clothes,' but I just try to take the clothes from the movie, which makes the selecting of film projects that much more difficult, because you try to play characters that might wear something you'd want to wear.
Vera said: 'Why do you feel you have to turn everything into a story?' So I told her why: Because if I tell the story, I control the version. Because if I tell the story, I can make you laugh, and I would rather have you laugh at me than feel sorry for me. Because if I tell the story, it doesn't hurt as much. Because if I tell the story, I can get on with it.
I feel like I've been very lucky with the directors. The characters I've been offered, especially lately, have given me the opportunity to play all of these different women. I always wanted that, and it's something that you cannot do by yourself. If you want to play a diversity of characters, somebody else has to have the imagination to give you a role completely out of the box. We depend on somebody else's trust, and these directors are giving me their trust, and I am grateful for that.
I think you're stereotyped after every film. Post 'Dev D,' I was only offered bold roles. Similarly, after 'Margarita With A Straw,' I was offered roles where I had to play differently-abled people. So, no matter what type of film you work in, people tend to slot you.
Sometimes I am more interested in the richness of the material with all the stuff we've done which all tell a story to me rather than any single film career I could have, because I really do find myself interested in other people's ideas. I just want to be responsible with an array of things that engage me and feel vital, opposed to the corporate media out there that is just about making the loudest noises possible.
Whenever people ask me what the story is for my next film, I won't tell and people feel it's because I'm being secretive or something, but it's actually because I'm ashamed to sum up a film in three sentences.
People think that just because I live in Mumbai, I'm not interested in Bengali films. But I want to act more in Tollywood because roles here are meatier.
One of the things that I was kind of holding on to from 'The Daily Show' was there was an exhaustion that I would feel because we just kind of got caught up in the news cycle. You tell a story, and that's an interesting story, and then the next day we have to drop it and talk about something else. That's so unfair to the story and the people.
In America, I am brown; I'm 'of colour', so I would be offered Latin roles, and I've fought against that. I don't want to be put in a category, to be just offered the same sort of thing. For me, it's all about different roles, telling the stories of the great writers.
I was offered to play an Italian part in an Italian film. Although I could not take it up because I did not have the time, the kind of characters being offered to us are changing.
When I get to tell a story through music videos or TV, it's all about finding the story that I want to tell, so I'm definitely open to acting roles, it just depends on the story.
When I was offered 'Abhijaan,' I didn't know any Bengali. But Satyajit Ray insisted, saying my character spoke a mixture of Bhojpuri, Hindi, Urdu and Bengali. I agreed only because he had faith in me.
Actually, I met a lot of directors and most of them have that fantasy to make a silent movie because for directors it's the purest way to tell a story. It's about creating images that tell a story and you don't need dialogue for that.
The audience is expecting good work from me. They want me to do roles that are unique and important in the story. So, I am trying to focus on different characters to play. I am doing the kind of films which are completely different from each other.
I'm in a fortunate position that sometimes you just get offered roles - they're not necessarily the roles you take, but to get offered a film is amazing. I think the work you've done before that is why you get it.
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