Quotes from Naseeruddin Shah

Sometimes, more money is spent on promotion of a film than the making of it. I don't understand that logic. The movie should run on its merit.

'Bombay Boys' is among my favourite movies and my favourite performance of myself.

I feel that cinema can't change society or bring a revolution. I'm also not sure of cinema as a medium of education. Documentaries can be educative, not feature films.

I never go to film festivals. I am allergic to them.

Film industry people don't read books.

I'm not trying to prove myself a great filmmaker. I don't know much about filmmaking anyway. I'm trying my hand at it to see if I'm any good.

I don't take reviews seriously. I don't even read them. Who is this person blasting forth his opinion? What's his worth, and how different is he from any man on the street?

A family business in cinema is not necessarily creative. It is generally about prolonging your family fortune.

The only serious function films can serve is to act as a record of their times.

To me, the most important elements in a theatre are the actors and the texts.

There was a time when I only wanted to show off, but as I've grown older, I've realised that acting isn't an end in itself. You act to communicate something, and if you have to use an accent or become thin or fat, that's part of your job.

I do enjoy thinking about the past.

As an actor, you have got to learn your job as thoroughly as you can. If you know your job, then there's nothing that can stop you. Because the bottom line is that only good actors will get work.

My dream is to produce a generation of actors who realise what the function of an actor in a movie is supposed to be.

I realise that I have made quite a few of the same mistakes with my kids that my dad made: not so much in trying to determine their lives for them but in terms of trying to discipline them.

Finally, I have realised that it is important to look good.

A person takes his own path. My father tried to guide me the best way he thought I should go, and it didn't work. I went the way I wanted to.

I do what work I get. I'm disappointed half the time.

There's so much hocus-pocus about acting styles; there's too much mysticism attached to it. But it's a craft like any other - it's something you have to work hard at.

My agent wanted me to audition for Dumbledore's character after Richard Harris died. I was asked if I would like to audition for it. But I wouldn't audition for it.

I am hard put to think of a single positive thing that commercial Hindi cinema has achieved.

Hindi cinema has only one religion, and that's money.

Somehow, Hindi movies never took me in the same way Hollywood films did. Even at the age of five or six, I could see the difference in the quality of execution.

An actor can never voice his opinion through films. All an actor does is convey what the director and writer want to say. You are a mouthpiece of their ideas. Your ideas reflect only in your choice of movies.