"I haven't given up smoking. I'm very clear about it, it's a personal choice. I want to cut down on it. It shouldn't be made into an issue to say, damn good or damn bad. Whether I give it up or not shouldn't be an issue."
"I'd rather sink trying to be different, than stay afloat like everyone else"
"I cannot repay my fans for what they have done for me, they have given me so much love and that love has taken me to the number 1 position where I am today, the only thing I can do for my fans is to never stop working, and to do films till the very end, it is the only way I can express my love for them."
"I'm the luckiest man in the world and I don't want to hide from the faces I'm acting for. So I don't surround myself with guards, I've never given an interview in which I've said I feel bad that I can't go shopping or I can't go to Chowpatty and eat bhelpuri without being mobbed. I'm not the kind of guy who goes out wearing dark glasses (I don't think I'm a big enough star to hide behind them, honest). I go to see movies in the cinema theatres, I go to restaurants with my family and friends even though I know people are going to disturb me there."
Awards that ignore me are losers.
ON CO-STARS...
(About Hrithik Roshan): I wish I looked as good as he does. And I wish I danced as well as he does!
"Yes, I do have a close circle of friends and I am very fortunate to have them as friends. I feel very close to them I think friends are everything in life after your family. You come across lots of people all the time but you only make very few friends and you have to be true to them otherwise what's the point in life?"
"God has become a generic term like `mind blowing.' It is embarrassing. I would have said that to Amitabh Bachchan, Naseeruddin Shah, Nana Patekar. I used to tell them I want to stand in the same space as you. I've told Kamal Haasan, I just want to touch you. They are the gods of acting. When people call me God, I say, no, I'm still an angel or saint of acting. I still have a long way to go."
I have no competition. Every year the names I'm pitted against keep changing. You can't cream the competition, you have to kill it.
ON FILMS...
"I was supposed to have done Rang De Basanti (2006), the guy on the motorbike. I didn't have the dates. They were shooting in Delhi and the dates were clashing with Paheli."
"It's not like Steven Spielberg is waiting with a script for me. I don't think I'll ever be offered a great international film in my lifetime, so I'd rather be a king here. Moreover, Indian cinema is the greatest in the world. But of course, after spending three months in LA, London, and New York I found that our cinema is a little exaggerated. To make a mark in the West we have to reach their level without losing our identity, culture or songs. I don't want to star in a Hollywood film, but want to make a film that crosses over universally."
On trying to get Paheli (2005) an Oscar nomination: "There's a misreport here about our lobbying at the Oscars. The understanding that we have of the Oscars is very different from how it really is. Because Indian film, foreign films are not known, you're supposed to hire a PR company which we did. It's not as if you just go there, show your films, lobby and talk to them. You're not allowed to lobby as in you're not allowed to meet the Academy members, talk to them or even make a call to them. You just keep advertising in the 'For Consideration For Oscars' category. We took out full page ads in papers like Variety and Hollywood Reporter. The only good thing we did was that we advertised very frequently, it was promoted on the same scale as the biggest of films. We did it because we could afford it."
"I felt Asoka (2001) should have been chosen for the Oscars. We had worked towards that. We had these international distributors for it. We were the first to actually release an Indian film internationally in traditionally non-Indian theaters. We spent a lot of money and lost a lot of money too. We were the first to put up hoardings in London, in tube stations. We did speak to everyone who was anyone here, wondering if Asoka could go to the Oscars. But the one that got chosen was Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India (2001) which was even better. So we had no complaints. After that I didn't make any film for the foreign market."
"To me, Devdas is the end of love stories. I've portrayed an obsessed lover, a nice lover, an angry lover, a romantic lover. And now I've played Devdas. For someone who doesn't even like love stories, I've played an awful lot of lovers. Personally speaking, I wouldn't see any of the romantic films I've acted in."
"I keep hearing that our films are escapist and unreal but I find our films the most real in the world. We don't have people going up in a rocket and single-handedly blowing up a meteor. We don't have a president on Air Force One saving the world or things coming out of people's stomachs. Our fantasies and escapism are real. It's just people singing and dancing in the street. If England had won the World Cup you would have seen people singing and dancing like that."
TAKE IT FROM ME...
ON CO-STARS...
ON FILMS...
