Taapsee Pannu Quotes

What career? A man's got a body of film of about four movies in about 10 years or something. I do it because I think I can do a good job of something and I'll enjoy it, do it, and sort of vanish. I don't want to be an actor for hire.

I'm very creative - making music, making puppets, that's my thing - but mainstream success and the demands that brings? No, not really for me.

I get to do interesting roles and make a living.

I've hit a point where my big luxury is getting to work on the things I want to work on. That's my hobby. It's being able to do a movie like 'Chef,' where you don't get paid, where you get paid scale, but you get to do exactly the movie you want to do. To me, that's worth more to me than whatever money I would have gotten paid.

I work with the options I have in front of me and my reasons for choosing a job can vary enormously depending on the circumstances. Sometimes I take a job because it's a group of people I'm dying to work with, and sometimes it can be a desire to shake things up a bit and not to take myself too seriously.

I've never felt particularly ambitious or driven, that's for sure, although I like to create stuff, whether it's a little doodle, a drawing, a small painting or a movie or a piece of music, so I suppose I'm driven by that. Everything I've done has felt very natural, and it's happened because it's happened.

It's never a matter of career decisions. I don't think in those terms. What matters is whether a role is interesting, if I will enjoy playing it, and if I'm confident I can do a good job.

I am lucky enough not to have to take jobs unless I love the material.

When you have a job you know you'd do for free, it takes a lot of the pressure away to be successful at it. So if it's doing theater in New York or teaching acting, I'm down for all of it.

I'm very competitive, and I want to be very successful, but at the end of the day, films to me are still films. I want them to be good, and I'll work the hardest, but at night, I go home to my life and my family, and that's where my heart lies.

I'm not of the mind where, 'It doesn't matter what you care about; you've got to have a safe reliable job and do the 9 to 5.' I obviously don't subscribe to that. There's nothing wrong with that, though, if that's what you want to do.

If work came along I liked, I would do it. If it interfered with home life for too long or took me away, I wouldn't.

I'm glad I've had the comic work. I plan to do others, but I could lay it down if I had to choose. I hope I don't have to, though.

Wanting to work is a luxury; having to work is not. If you're an artist, an actor, and you don't have to work, then you do work that you wanna do.

I just don't really think of career. I've never been driven by career.

I have a teaching job that allows me to pay the rent and affords me to, frankly, write the books I want to write.

I didn't want a desk job; I knew I'd get bored.

As long as I can make the films I want to make in decent conditions, I am happy.

Probably the hardest question I get asked is, 'How do I choose between passion and practicality?' I can't answer that. I had to do both. I was passionate about pursuing a career in financial services. But I was also passionate about feeding my child.

After I got back my career and my artistic freedom in 1982, my golden rule is the music must never suffer.

I thought I'd be on TV and movies - that's what I really wanted - and I can't believe I didn't need to do that. I did it on my own with just me and my camera. That's very, very weird.

I never really thought about what kind of career I wanted to map out for myself. I just wanted to do work that spoke to my heart. 'Atlanta' definitely did that.

I wouldn't want to change anything about my career.

I don't want to do films where I'm just there with nothing much to do.

I've always said from starting off, 'I don't mind if I'm in a big budget film or a huge play or something small in London playing for 50 people, as long as I'm doing what I love doing for a living.'