Myself acquainted with misfortune, I learn to help the unfortunate.
I go on a hunting safari at least once a year to Botswana, which is fantastic because we have a huge area of wilderness entirely to ourselves. My island covers roughly 55 acres, which again I have to myself, with nearly half a kilometre of private beach with my own jetties and boats.
If all of us acted in unison as I act individually there would be no wars and no poverty. I have made myself personally responsible for the fate of every human being who has come my way.
Acting helped me as I was growing up. It helped me learn about myself, helped me travel, helped me understand life, express myself, all those wonderful things. So I'm very, very grateful; it's a fun job. It's a luxury.
I don't care about my personal acting career anymore. I'm done with it. After 10 years of making movies and doing better than I ever could have imagined, I sort of had to ask myself: 'What am I supposed to do with all of this success that I have had?'
I was cast in commercials, music videos, and booked a lot of modeling jobs. But my acting career never took off because I was holding myself back. I was acting across from male partners who didn't know that I am trans. I was being taught by teachers who didn't know.
I loved plays, I loved films, but I had no desire to act until I had just put out my album 'Like Water for Chocolate.' Creatively, I felt like I'd hit a ceiling, and I needed something else to express myself, and I just decided to take acting classes.
I never thought of myself doing period. When you're in your acting classes, and you think about the kind of roles you want to play, it's always 'modern relationship drama'-type things.
It's so funny, you go to acting school thinking you're going to learn how to be other people, but really it taught me how to be myself. Because it's in understanding yourself deeply that you can lend yourself to another person's circumstances and another person's experience.
Through theater and acting school, I found a way to articulate myself.
I always wanted to be an actor, so I began to prepare myself for a career in acting. I did a course at Kishore Namit Kapoor's acting school. I was with Shiamak Davar's dance school and also did theatre with Nadira Babbar.
I don't want to be a historical action figure or treated like I'm dead. Like one of those people where they go, 'Oh, isn't she dead?' And then I walk up, and they're like, 'Whoa.' I can't really complain... because I've made myself into a historical action figure. I was like, 'Yeah, come on in!'
If I am just, like, on a run by myself, I've never been stopped. Even if I'm at Target buying my own action figure, people would not believe that it's me. I actually was like, 'This is me!'
I don't know if I see myself as really an action hero, but I like doing physical movies and I like doing movies where the writing is very lean.
When I started studying acting in New York, I didn't plan to be an action hero. I just wanted to learn acting because I felt it was something I needed to try to do for myself, to express something, my inner pain, or something I couldn't get out.
I certainly don't think of myself as an action hero.
I never really thought of myself as being an action hero or a leading man or any of that. I'm a character actor.
For me, there have been times when an action movie, even a 'Tomb Raider,' has helped me get out of myself and be physical again. It's like therapy.
I think what's dangerous about being an actor who does action movies is you think, 'Well, I can totally handle myself now.' But if my opponent didn't know the other half of the routine, I don't know how well I'd do.
I'm not a person who defends myself very often. I kind of let my actions speak for me.
