Quotes About Film

Endless Jane Austen film adaptations have given us the idea that the Regency was a classy, pretty, palatable period of history. Notable for their muslins, tea parties and flirting, you'd think that most Regency folk lived in highly desirable rectories.

I did B com but realised that it was not my cup of tea. I was always fascinated by animation, and after I completed my course, I wanted to go abroad and pursue it. I used to sketch a lot and was rather serious about it. But all this was until I joined films.

In a big Bollywood romantic film, taking my shirt off and spreading the hand towards the mountain with dancers behind me are not my cup of tea.

After university, I went into film. I started out making tea, managed a brief stint as an assistant director, then found myself writing a screenplay. In the end, I wrote quite a few - but by January 2006, I wanted out.

It's always a challenge to shoot a period film and not have it look like you hit the tea stain button in post.

After 'Paths to Freedom,' I met some people who used to teach drama in Mountjoy and they said that the prisoners loved 'Rats.' We went back to Mountjoy to research this film and the governor was showing us around and he introduced us to a few prisoners.

The great thing about films is that you have access to this whole world of experts who teach you the skills your character's supposed to have.

In school I was sidelined by Tamil language teachers. But in the film industry, I got interested in Tamil poetry after reading and working with the Vairamuthu.

Being the offspring of English teachers is a mixed blessing. When the film star says to you, on the air, 'It was a perfect script for she and I,' inside your head you hear, in the sarcastic voice of your late father, 'Perfect for she, eh? And perfect for I, also?'

Every film teaches you something; every experience on every film set with every co-star teaches you something. You learn something new. I think the challenge is to keep working harder and doing better.

Every film, regardless of being a success or a failure or anything in between, teaches you something. You might not sometimes realise what it taught you, but down the line, there would be a lesson in it.

Nothing really teaches you for the film world.

Though every film teaches me at least three new things, I don't subscribe to doing homework about a character's backstory unless it's a historical role or one that requires training in accent.

In the film 'PK', questions have been raised about the theatrics surrounding religion, but it is not limited to a particular faith. In the end, the film teaches us, every religion says love one another and trust one another.

One of the best teaching experiences Ed Schein and I had when we were teaching at MIT in the 1960s was inventing a course on leadership through film.

I'm starting to teach now: I teach in the graduate film program at NYU and next year I'm going to be teaching at Los Angeles at the film program and English program at UCLA.

One of our film lecturers, one of the guys teaching the course, said to the departing film class, 'No one in this room is going to make it, as a filmmaker.' I have no idea why he said that.

At the end of the day, I want to be a teacher at a university, teaching film or acting.

Essentially, it is the director who is the creative head of a film. The final authority on all decisions lies with the director. That is how it should be. And then other team members can give their creative inputs.

My criteria for choosing a film are first the story and the team that I'm working with.

I try to watch film with teammates and help them as well, so that's just part of the game, part of playing.

That's when it really came together for me that I was in a Bond film, to have my own spy car!

The other thing is this industry has decided it only has one market. Unlike any other industry in the world, unlike film or books or sports even, this industry has decided it has only one market and that's 14 year old boys.

My kids love it. I thought I was the coolest dad in the world when I got to be in a Bond film, but 'Harry Potter', too? Well, I think I qualify for a medal for exceptional parenting or something, don't you?