AMITABH BACHCHAN

Frankly I've never really subscribed to these adjectives tagging me as an 'icon', 'superstar', etc. I've always thought of myself as an actor doing his job to the best of his ability.

The select group of people who do make realistic cinema, who do make cinema perhaps a little more acceptable to the Western audience, is a very small percentage.

I don't use any techniques; I'm not trained to be an actor. I just enjoy working in films.

I just lead my life as naturally, as normally as I possibly can. But I can't help it if controversy is hounding me day in and day out. I'm quite amazed sometimes by the way they go about it. I grow a beard and it lands up in the editorial in The Times of India.

I like to feel the butterflies in the stomach, I like to go home and have a restless night and wonder how I'm going to be able to accomplish this feat, get jittery. That hunger and those butterflies in the stomach are very essential for all creative people.

There are many things that I feel I have missed out on.

No new projects at the moment. There are restrictions to how much I can take on. And I need to finish those that I am committed to do before thinking ahead. But I'd rather they take final shape before we talk of them.

Mr. Leonardo DiCaprio - he be soo gorgeous, no wonder all the ladies flockin' to him - He be Gatsby.

The amount of things I have been through and the remarkable ways in which the body has reacted is just phenomenal. No wonder I became religious, because you don't know why something's happening to you and you don't know how you bounced back.

Basically I am just another actor who loves his work and this thing about age only exists in the media.

Everyone must accept that we will age and age is not always flattering.

You don't see Indians in Hollywood films around which a story can revolve. As soon as we have a social presence in your society, I am sure there will be many actors from our part of the world that will be acting in Hollywood films.

I have never really been confident about my career at any stage.

I sometimes lament the fact that I do not have the benefit of a complete and ailment free body structure.

Dearest TV media and vans outside my home, please do not stress and work so hard.

I'd love to romance Aishwarya Rai. But I'm 58 now. So I have to play her father.

I did not resign from politics because of Bofors. I resigned because I do not know how to play petty politics. I did not know back then and I don't know now either.

It's a war zone, my body, and one which has been through a great deal.

I have never been a superstar and never believed in it.

I am looking forward to going to Dubai because it gives us an opportunity to interact with each other. We can sit and enjoy each other's company. We can go out for a walk without worrying about shooting schedules.

Indian actors, because of the format of our stories, need to be good actors, and be able to perform emotional sequences, do a bit of comedy, dance and singing, action, because all of this forms just one film. In many ways I'd say there are greater demands on Indian actors than there are on Hollywood.

People ask me why it is that when I portray the 'angry young man' on screen, I really look angry. They reason that it is due to some suppression in my childhood. But, it's just that I can't help it; it's in my genes.

The body is an amazing system.

It's a huge change from when I started in the 1960s, but what is really impressive is that the number of ladies on set, the women working on set is a huge percentage. There used to be no women. It was just the leading lady's mother, perhaps the hairdresser and the makeup person.

I'm very fortunate to have spent so much time in the industry and to have lived through several generations of filmmakers, actors and technicians. There's a huge volume of experience seeing people change and seeing content change.