Pankaj Kapur Quotes

I'm an actor; I want to play roles, not a role.

There's a positive side to film and television, the sense of feeding into the theater... Your fans will follow you, hopefully, and be open-minded to see you play other things and experience other stories you want to tell.

I don't have a specific type of role that I aspire to play or aspire to act. I really like a challenge and I really like doing things that are different because if I had to do the same thing all the time, then I don't think I would be an actor.

I want to continually play characters that speak to me, but also are different than what I've just done.

If I had to choose criteria, for me, it's about first the director. I want to be a part of something that's good and intellectually challenging. After the director it's the character and the story. That's the deal for me.

I'm looking for challenges, and as always, what matters is the script, the character and the director.

At this point, I'm happy to be part of something special. As an actor I liked to choose scripts that I'm passionate about.

I wouldn't take a directing job if I didn't think it was enriching life.

Typecasting is something I have to be careful with, since I play myself on Geek & Sundry so much on my weekly show 'The Flog.' That's why I did 'Dragon Age: Redemption' last year, so I could do something a little more dramatic and hard-edged.

I'd like to think that we strive in film and theatre to tell great stories, and I believe in the power of storytelling in our culture.

The really courageous and bold thing is to make movies about human behaviour.

Without a doubt, I was born to want to make cinema, but the kind of cinema I want to make is not like commercial movies, which I enjoy myself, but I wanted to be the kind of filmmaker who wrote original work, sort of like a novelist would who deals with who we are and our times or our relationships.

Acting, to me, has been many things: It's a business, and it's a craft, and it's a political act - it's whatever adjective is most applicable.

I think the thing that I always try to do - because it piques my interest - is to play really different parts all the time.

The real joy is in constructing a sentence. But I see myself as an actor first because writing is what you do when you are ready and acting is what you do when someone else is ready.

I like playing the contrasting roles. It what inspires me to act. If I look back on my career I am happy that I have gotten to play a wide variety of different roles, from Mike Dexter, to Van Ray in Fast Lane, to Dr. Cullen to Coop.

What I learned from doing 'The Graduate' was it doesn't matter what the medium is... as long as the material is inspiring and the characters are well written.

If you look at my body of work, my characters drastically vary, and so I typically don't play the same role. It makes me feel reborn with each role.

I love doing comedy, and that's the thing I will always go back to, really, but I'd love to have the freedom to do sort of 'meaty' roles but also have the freedom to do the sort of films I want to make, like what Woody Allen does. You forget he's funny because you're so gripped by the story, but they still make you laugh.

'Heroes', 'Desperate Housewives', 'The Sopranos' - they're all very stylised. 'The Wire' is much more rooted in realism and honesty. In American television, I can't think of anything I'd rather have been in because it has got something to say and that is the kind of thing I want to do.

I wanted to be an actor. That was my real goal. But I wasn't any good at it, so I wrote my own material and acted through that. That's my idea of fun. I get to be all these things in the songs.

My dream as an actor growing up was always to challenge myself to different genres, different roles, and it's actually rare that an actor's given that opportunity to do that.

And because performing for a game involves real acting. The way they create a game is very similar now to how they create a film. I've always wanted to stretch my acting skills, and the timing being what it is, I couldn't say no.

Fiction is socially meaningful.

Both my parents were actors. I was schooled to think that acting was an important social service, that it was something that human beings need.