To be honest, I never went to school for acting, and I never learned to break down a script. I took acting classes my whole life, but they never taught me anything about acting. They just taught me about myself.
I was fortunate enough to model, but it was always work for me. It was a way to support myself and finance acting classes.
I took acting classes, and I'm always trying to improve myself. Everyone can improve, and the more you work in the industry, the better you are going to feel about it.
For a while, I was a flight attendant. I lived in New York, and I was a bartender. I took cooking classes, martial arts classes. I taught a foreign language. I went back to college and studied acting, which I love. I was doing stunt work as well.
I wish they taught green screen acting classes.
I'm in the game of spinning plates. I'm spinning a boxing plate. I'm spinning a Tae Kwon Do plate. I'm spinning a Jujitsu plate. I'm spinning a freestyle wrestling plate. I'm spinning a karate plate. If I was to put all them down and have one boxing plate spinning, it would be like a load off my shoulders.
But in the Indian film industry, from the moment a child is born, he is taught music, he is taken for classical classes.
I really started dreaming... and broke out of my shyness when I got to Howard University. My first acting class was an Intro to Acting class with Professor Bay, who really broke me out of my shell, encouraged me to follow my dreams and make them a reality.
I explored the arts in general; I took painting classes and sketching classes and acting classes and all sorts of different things.
I hate acting classes. I did a few, but I've always hated acting classes. I prefer to just watch a movie or watch TV and take it from there.
When I first moved out to L.A., I was still 17. The deal with my dad was that I would be able to live out there if I were to treat my acting classes like college classes. So when I moved, that's all I did: trained and auditioned.
When you are born and brought up in Udupi, you end up as a doctor or an engineer. Else you are thought to be a dull head. I had to complete my engineering and worked in the IT industry for a few years to get myself the financial support to pursue my dream of acting.
The world of time, of space and condition, pleasure and pain, birth, growth, maturation, decay and death, spinning, spinning, spinning this world, always spinning.
Children should be taught in school that you should have all kinds of asset classes in your portfolio. They should be taught what those asset classes are, and their advantages and disadvantages.
I was applying to the art school, but there was a checklist that said I had to do either production design or stage management or acting. I thought, "I don't want to be an actor, but I know production and stage management take acting classes" - this is literally my internal monologue. I was like, "Designers don't have to take acting classes. Cool. I'll check that box".
I started teaching spinning early when it was first happening in the '90s. I love the mind-body connection of spinning.