I was very outgoing, and a good-looking kid. I started doing all the catalogs. I made 60 commercials by the time I was 6. I must have been a natural, because I never took an acting lesson.
Finding the discipline, the motivation, the focus, the passion to sit down in front of a blank piece of paper or a blank computer screen every day and then to make it come alive with characters and with plot is incredibly exciting and at the same time terrifying and frustrating, and sometimes it comes easy and sometimes it comes really hard.
If the Indian people want stories written about themselves, how they want them told, they are going to have to make them, they're going to have to finance them. If you let Hollywood do it, Hollywood is going to get it wrong most of the time.
I have fond memories of my childhood. I spent five wonderful years on a popular TV show, but I didn't have a normal childhood. I was tutored for grades 4-11.
Working on 'NYPD Blue' and '24', those two series, I did full runs on those. It's great work, but everything has to align. The producers have to want you; the network has to want you; there has to be great writing; and it's not as easy as it may appear to the outsiders to make all those things align.
In the John Wayne movies, the Indians were savages that were trying to scalp you. That culture has really suffered because of the stereotype you see in those westerns.
I was never really comfortable doing comedy. Though it was good the first couple of years, there were problems, and it became a stifling experience. I was happy it ended.
There were always moments where I'd say, 'What else can I do with my life?' But when I was 30 years old and discovered I could write - I wrote 'Black Cloud' in six weeks - it opened up a whole new world for me.
I didn't grow up around wild horses, no. But I've appreciated their beauty and their power ever since I can remember.
I don't wilt easily, and a director can't either. He's the captain of the ship and he's got to be in total control. He also has to have respect for the people he's working for. From being an actor and being on a set my whole life, I'm very comfortable there. And I'm not afraid.
