When I started out on 'Min Kamp', I was so extremely frustrated over my life and my writing. I wanted to write something majestic and grand, something like 'Hamlet' or 'Moby Dick,' but found myself with this small life - looking after kids, changing diapers, quarreling with my wife, unable to write anything, really.
With a goose-quill and a few sheets of paper, I mock myself of the universe. They say I am the son of a courtesan; it may be so, but I have the heart of a King. I live free, I enjoy myself, I can call myself happy.
I've been mocked a lot. I've been made fun of, you know, of the standards that I keep out, and that I hold out on the road and the way I conduct my business and myself and the way I behave in this business.
I don't mock things, which makes me more vulnerable to mockery myself. If you're cynical, you're protected from mockery. But I have to be nice. I don't think I have irony. A sense of humour, yes, but not irony.
A few years ago, I actually did come up with a mocking sort of epitaph for myself. It's this: 'Here lies Robert Silverberg. He spent most of his life in the future. Now he's in the past.'
I've tried my hand at everything... trying to whittle down the right profession for myself. I tried my hand at clothes, I've modelled, but nothing really worked for me. I didn't really enjoy it, and maybe I was not really good enough.
I like Kamal Haasan's daring choice of roles. When I was in school and college, I modelled myself on him. I was so much in awe of him.
I was a musician and did moderately well at that. I made an enjoyable living as a very young man, but I think as I became more comfortable and knowledgeable about myself and what I wanted, I moved into acting. I came to it rather late - later than most. I just really wanted to try my hand, and thankfully, it worked out for the most part.
I gave myself two months to book a job. One month later I was cast on 'Modern Family.'
I'm a modern woman in the sense of I take care of myself, I'm fiercely independent, and I'm really ambitious. Yet I have these old-school thoughts in my mind.
Hollywood Regency is a label some people put on me, but I consider myself a modernist in that I always try to make the work feel fresh.
I realise that every time my face is on TV or I'm playing in a tournament, that I am a role model for a lot of people and a lot of kids do look up to me. I try to do my best in that regard and put myself across as honestly and as modestly as possible, as well.
I worked really hard, and I surpassed myself... I didn't have, visually, what it took. I was not pretty, I had teeth problems, and I was very skinny. I didn't fit the mold.
There are times when I surprise myself with the kind of patience I have shown and then there are times when I felt that I could have handled it easily but I made a mountain out of a mole.
My moms always told me, 'How long you gonna play the victim?' I can say I'm mad and I hate everything, but nothing really changes until I change myself.
I'm free to see things objectively because I don't consider myself American, and I don't consider myself British or Indian. I'm kind of an amalgam or mongrel of a lot of different places and experiences. In a lot of ways it's been a good thing for me. It's enabled me to do what I do on 'The Daily Show.'
I have pushed the boat out as far as I should in terms of taking on too many things. I'm getting older and I just could not take it any more. I am now monitoring myself very closely and I'm just trying not to get into that sort of state again.
When I'm acting, I'm two beings. There's the one monitoring the distance between myself and the camera, making sure I hit my marks, and there is the one driven by this inner fire, this delicious fear.
My mom is going to kill me for talking about sleeping with people. But I don't want to put myself in the position where I'm in a monogamous relationship right now. I'm not dating just one person. 'Sex and the City' changed everything for me because those girls would sleep with so many people.
Oftentimes, even as a little kid, I would get up before anyone else. My brother would still be sleeping, my mom would still be sleeping, so I would literally play 'Monopoly' by myself. I would play board games; I would do things by myself.
