Success is very intoxicating. It is very difficult to handle all the fame and adulation. It corrupts you. You start to believe that everybody around you is in awe of you, that everybody wants you, and that everybody is thinking of you all the time.
All my cop/gangster dramas have been spaced out, but somewhere, the films in which I played the bad guy were extremely successful, so people are under the impression that I play only such roles. I call it selective amnesia.
Cinema is a great binding force for a nation.
I don't want the child in me to die. Fortunately, I'm lucky enough that my profession allows me to pursue my boyhood fantasies even as an adult.
I rarely give interviews. I am against doing television interviews or chatting on the Net, even to promote my films. This is my personal decision, and it is not to hurt or embarrass anybody.
I don't work for the commercial success of the film. I work to satisfy my producers who give me the money. I work to satisfy the director who has written a script for me. Of course, I have to satisfy the actor in me, but I want to satisfy them first.
I think I have stopped being nervous about the outcome of a film. The five consecutive flops in 1997 and the five consecutive hits in 1999 have mellowed me in many ways.
'Villain' succeeded because we were genuinely working towards a good film. We worked hard and with a lot of conviction.
I need a producer who will look for a good script. I need a director whose purpose to make a film is not for his survival but because he loves making films.
Acting is a learning process. And what you are doing in your early films is essentially picking up the nuances, the tricks of your trade. And somewhere along the line, you become analytical and learn to enjoy what you are doing.
If you look at it closely, 'Mankatha' is a politically incorrect film. It explores the darker side of the human mind, and I think, while watching it, people are, in a sense, redeeming themselves of their own guilt.
I believe life is a gift, and I want to live it productively. I am not into this numbers game.
As a child, I always wanted to be a race car pilot.
I wanted to be a professional motor racer. It was only due to lack of sponsors that I could not do it.
Filmmaking, I often like to say, is like Russian roulette. You never know what you'll get. The only thing you can do is find solace in the fact that, irrespective of the film's response, you work hard to make the money you do.
Honeymoons are great, but they don't last. And I think the same is true with success on the screen - today, I am all over the place; tomorrow, I may be gone - I may have to make room for someone else. So why make a big song and dance about it all?
I dropped out of school after my tenth standard. But both my elder brother and younger brother are highly educated.
I would not say I was not interested in studies - it just wasn't there in me to pursue academics. I would open a page in the textbook and start thinking about everything under the sun except what was there in the book. I was more into extra-curricular activities and sports like NCC, rifle shooting, aero-modelling, bike racing, etc.
I don't want to put up this act of being a voracious reader, which I am not.
