When you're younger, you get scripts that you are too young for and now I'm getting scripts, which I think, "I'm too old for this character." They can always shift things around to make it work and make the ages work. But I'm definitely getting more complex and interesting roles and less what you would expect. So I can experiment more and have a bit more freedom when I'm putting things on tape.
I wanted to do more and not be stereotyped. The roles coming my way were getting repetitive.
Roles that involved, whether it be training, whether it be physicality, getting skinny, there's some investment. There are roles that you do like that and sometimes there are roles that you do to make sure your family doesn't starve, but then you have to still say, "Is there something I can do with this? Can I do something with this that will be fair to the people watching it and fair to my time as well?" I'm at the point where that luxury of choice is getting more and more for me, absolutely, but it's more primarily roles that are more demanding of me in every way.
I'd quite like to do a film but I'd also love to do more theatre. I want to keep challenging myself with good roles. It's harder for women because there aren't as many challenging roles.
No artiste wants to be boxed. We thrive on challenging roles, and they can come from anywhere. I consider myself blessed to be recognised as a pan-Indian actor. Yes, it means more hard work, prepping more for the roles, but I'm all for it.
I guess it's about getting older. I know that I'm going to lose people that I love - I'm going to die myself - so everything seems to be getting somehow sweet and more important and more special and more humbling and more challenging and more terrifying all at the same time.
I do try to look at scripts and keep an eye out for challenging roles.
Some of the roles that are challenging are more in theater and TV. In movies, there's a tendency to cast actors in roles that have been successful for them. It has to pay for itself.
I give preference to scripts and of course, the importance of my role in the storyline. Still I am not after hero roles. I take such roles only when I find the scripts exciting.
When I got to high school and college, I was more involved in athletics then I was in acting. At that time, I was trying to figure out what my identity was and roles became more gendered, it was a little bit more challenging for me to stay with the acting.
I would like more challenging roles. I definitely would like to something that's more challenging.
I'm sure my agents would like me to play leading roles, and I guess I should, but I'm more interested in the character parts. They're more fun, challenging and interesting.
I don't know if it's that the scripts are evolving or just that I'm getting older, but the characters become more interesting as you get older because you've lived more life at different stages. You've loved; you've lost; you have more of that journey.
In so many roles I've played the outsider. As an outsider, you have more energy to succeed simply because you are an outsider. There are scripts floating around but they're not coming my way and I think that I am getting a little bit too old to play Napoleon. But if I was ever offered the role I would grab it.
I am not interested in things getting better; what I want is more: more human beings, more dreams, more history, more consciousness, more suffering, more joy, more disease, more agony, more rapture, more evolution, more life.
It turned out to be exactly that, but more challenging emotionally. I looked at it in a more physical way, having to act in a chair and move around. But it really was more emotionally challenging.