The actor is concerned with his own bit of it, but the director's somehow trying to work the whole thing into a much bigger picture. It's like conducting an orchestra.

Even if we don't know it or aren't aware of it, politics and philosophy are really what make our up lives.

It's hard to blame someone because they simply don't have time.

In India, one has to plan according to the monsoons.

They suggested I should introduce an element of reincarnation in the story. At first, I thought that was silly. But then, this whole time dimension began to fascinate me.

Conventionally, one looks at history as something of the past. But after Einstein, who knows what is in the past and what is in the present?

Eventually, the tribe developed so much confidence in me that they invited me to be their chieftain.

I like cinema audiences. I respect them, and I talk to them just like I would anybody I know.

I cannot forget a conversation that I had with an elderly couple from the tribe. They asked me whether I would kill them after I had finished. When I asked them why they asked that, they replied, Because you white men always do!

When you look at our world, the truth is that we're all under the influence of politics.

I'm not a very serious person. You know how they say that clowns are very funny in public and are really sad at home? I'm really kind of stupid at home and more serious in public.

Sitting down to a meal with an Indian family is different from sitting down to a meal with a British family.

I try to address my audiences intelligently. The man in the street counts, but sometimes he forgets that he counts.

Making the City Of Joy gave me the best political education of my life. It became a wrestling match between an Englishman who had gradually ceased to be a Marxist, and a culture that was becoming more Marxist by the day.

I think the job of movie reviewing can be really tough. If a film has layers that need to be thought about, it's easy to get missed the first time around.

The actor is concerned with his own bit of it, but the director's somehow trying to work the whole thing into a much bigger picture. It's like conducting an orchestra.

If the movie's well made and it's about things that count, people will ultimately see the depth in it.

I've never wanted to do something where I'd berate the audience.

If you spend a whole afternoon just eating popcorn and watching football, there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. But if that's all you do, you get swept along with the tide, without any idea of where you're going.

Good directing is about getting the performance to be just what's right for the movie.

The history of the white man in India really jumped up and bit me in the neck.

I think a film should have a gestation period of at least two or three years.

I like DVDs so much - it's such a better format than VHS.

I don't really say much about reviewers. It's a very tough job to get all of the depth of a movie all at once.

Much of Indian science seems intuitive and not bound by the rigid thinking of classical scientists.

I simply wanted to state that during this little slice of history, this is what happened and these were the good sides of it, these were the more dangerous sides of it, and this was the result.

Music is a very integral part of the film, but it will not be as full of music as a Bollywood film.

Indian culture certainly gives the Indian mind, including the mind of the Indian scientist, the ability to think out of the box.

I began to feel that, in a sense, we were all prisoners of our own history.

Very good coaches for ski jumpers stand at the top of the slope and watch the jumpers prepare, rather than standing at the bottom and watching them land.

I think that will be a lot of fun for audiences to get the same stream of consciousness that was going through my head at the time. It was very exciting to suddenly recall what I was feeling at the time.

Very good coaches for ski jumpers stand at the top of the slope and watch the jumpers prepare rather than standing at the bottom and watching them land.

My favorite actor is Wallace Beery.

I've been a very lucky actor.

I don't think I could be happy as an actor if there was a tyrant on the set.

When I was starting to get noticed as an actor in the 1970s for something other than the third cowboy on the right who ended up dying in every movie or episode, Burt Reynolds was the biggest star in the world.

Most parts that can be played by one actor can equally well be played by another, but not this.

I think, frankly, that I'm a better director than I was an actor.

I knew an actor's career goes up and down and back up again. Your standing in this business can't be your whole identity; otherwise, you're doomed.

I don't think any actor feels comfortable watching themselves in movies. You must be very narcissistic. The problem with your own opinion of yourself is that contrary to the normal spectators, when you watch a film you are in, you only watch yourself.

I don't think there has been any increase in sophistication in the audience. When people are aware of a concept that's easy to understand, and there's an actor who will attract them to the theater and it's a movie that's funny three-quarters of the time, it will be successful.

I never dreamed about being an actor, because that was out of reach. Coming from a small town that was big in farming, and also big in clothing factories, you don't dream about being a professional football player or an actor.

My goal was always to be recognized as a good actor but no one was interested in that, simply because society just wants to warm towards your appearance. This is the great blemish of society.

If you really do want to be an actor who can satisfy himself and his audience, you need to be vulnerable.

To be honest with you, when I got into this I never thought about reviews. I never thought about what people would say about me. I was just a young guy who was excited to become a comedian and an actor and I just wanted to get to do what I got to do.

It was very natural for me to want to disappear into dark theater, I am really very shy. That is something that people never seem to fully grasp because, when you are an actor, you are meant to be an exhibitionist.

I think that I've still not been successful at playing the role of the retired actor, and I'd like to work on that.

And once you cease to be a real person, you stop being a good actor.

When I decided I wanted to be an actor, I said I wanted to work with quality actors and directors.