Kanika Dhillon Quotes

'Silver Linings' has proved a golden opportunity for me.

How my film career happened, I don't know. It was unplanned. I'd been in films and TV throughout the Sixties and early Seventies, but it was really 'The Naked Civil Servant' in 1975 that put me on the radar.

I didn't have big movie offers, or any big agents wanting to work with me. I had to go grassroots, start at the bottom and go on 150 auditions before someone finally gave me a shot.

I started acting when I was 13 in New York. Worked there for a couple years, then auditioned for a show there that was going to be filming here. Ended up coming out, getting the job and just staying.

Wes Craven was the guy who gave me my start, from my perspective, for almost no reason in particular.

When I was young, I used to tell my mum that she had to get me on the TV, but then modelling just sort of happened.

I always had ambitions to work in the U.K. I just never thought it was gonna happen so soon. So I think, obviously, I wouldn't have gotten 'The Riot Club' if I wasn't in England. I wouldn't have gotten 'Pride' if I hadn't done 'The Riot Club.' And so maybe I would just have been on a totally different trajectory, but who knows?

I was on a picture for four or five days, had an opportunity to be on a set, and the assistant cameraman kept showing me things. One day I climbed the fence, knowing they needed an assistant cameraman. A couple of days later, I was one. The first day or two, it was pretty disastrous, but I knew something about photography, and I caught on quick.

A lot of actresses start out modeling because it's a great way to sort of get your foot in the door. That's all it is, though. They open the door, and you have to walk through it.

About 10 minutes before I found out that I had landed 'Fantastic Beasts', I got a residual check in the mail for zero dollars. On the check it said 'Advice Slip.' And I was like, 'Well, what's the advice? Go into another line of work?

I was a complete vagabond till the age of 20, when I got my first job as an assistant director with Pankaj Parashar.

No one in a normal walk of life flies into a new city unknown and unemployed and ends up doing their job on national television a few days later. I love the game, but it's crazy sometimes.

For me, Sundance always felt big. It's not the only way to make your way, but for me, it was definitely that critical link between struggling artist, kind of working on my own, to actually working professionally and being connected and being seen.

I cannot forget the day when I gave the first screen test of my life. The film was Gulshan Rai's 'Trishul' and I was selected. I was just 16.

When I came to Mumbai, I didn't know a soul. The only person I knew was an assistant director, which, everyone agrees, is the lowest form of life on the set. So, it was not a great contact to have. So, I knew from day one that I wasn't going to be launched opposite a superstar.

Satyajit Ray has played a very major part in my career. He was the one who gave me the launch platform when he selected me for his 'Apur Sansar.'

One day, I went to meet a film producer and entered the wrong flat. It was a casting agency, and they suggested that I audition for a four-hero Telugu film. I was confirmed a month later. Interestingly, it's not easy down South for a newcomer to bag positive roles, but I was adamant.

I always knew that I will have to find my own way in the industry. My father had told me that making a mark in Bollywood will be solely my fight.

I had no ambitions to become an actor, whatsoever. I was just waiting for my films to get made and some friends of mine, out of the kindness of their hearts, because I was sitting around doing nothing, started casting me in small roles and the roles got bigger.

It was like a dream to me to suddenly get into the market with that kind of movie, like La Haine. It actually created my identity as an actor, that thing.

I was just this video-store guy and now I was actually making movies and stuff.

I turned down a lot of films before I made my first one. I knew that it was time for me to get into movies.

If someone does offer you a job, say 'yes.' You can always quit later. Then at least you'll be one of the unemployed as opposed to one of the never-employed. Nothing looks worse on a resume than nothing.

Right before I got The West Wing, I was pretty much out of money. When I first came in to Warner Brothers, Aaron Sorkin was there. Of course I was nervous; I'm sitting here in front of the guy who wrote "You can't handle the truth!".

After Bottle Rocket, I started getting acting work. People started offering me roles in movies. It wasn't something that I thought about as a kid growing up in Texas. Actually, maybe I would have thought of it as a possibility, but it seemed so crazily far-fetched to think that you could work in movies that I really didn't ever quite imagine it. It was just lucky.