Nani Quotes

Working in 'The Namesake' was a personally enriching experience.

When I first started out in the entertainment business, I made a list of people I thought it would be good to meet. Not people who could give me a job or a deal, but people who could shake me up, teach me something, challenge my ideas about myself and the world.

I think everyone goes through chapters in their life and there was a time when I wasn't feeling terribly positive about what I was contributing to film, or wasn't feeling as if I was going in the direction I wanted and I re-evaluated what I was doing.

If I had my career over again? Maybe I'd say to myself, speed it up a little.

I wasted most of my 20s being so frustrated I forgot to have fun. I was so concentrated on one thing - 'Must make movie.'

I don't regret doing any of my films. All of them have been great learning experiences, and they have contributed to making me what I am today.

All the work that I do, whether or not it ends up being commercially successful or not, feels like the most important thing to me while I'm doing it. I try to take something away from every project, and so they all feel like milestones for one reason or another.

Don't get me wrong: I'm overjoyed with my career to date. But perhaps I could have done more. Mostly, I just did whatever the directors told me to do.

I always look at myself as kind of a work in progress. I hope that's not always the case. But for me, every film is a learning experience.

When we are caught up in the nature of our work and are asked to take on another job or position, rarely do we step back and ask ourselves, 'What do I really want to do? What is it at this point in my career and life that is important to me?'

I would say 'Looking' and 'Spring Awakening' are the most important and personal projects I've ever been apart of.

I had now been in the United States of America something like five years, working here and there as the inclination seized me, which, I must confess, was not often. I was certainly getting some enjoyment out of life, but now and then the waste of time appalled me, for I still have a conviction that I was born to a different life.

I just want to take the time to think about what I've achieved in my career so far, where I need to go, and what I need to do to get better as a player.

As far as my career goes, I've never really had an opportunity to reflect on what I've done, with taking in the accolades and achievements that I've been able to bring together.

I don't know what my ambitions are until they turn up really but I'd love to work with Shane Meadows, I know that much!

I don't reflect back too much on moments in my career.

In my twenties, I thought it was getting a sitcom. Then I got a sitcom pilot in my early thirties, and realized I didn't want it. It was a rude awakening. When it wasn't picked up, I was crushed, but then in retrospect I've made two films and produced three one-man shows since then. It's the luckiest thing that happened in my life.

I'm trying to sign up and do movies that I'll be proud of it. That's kind of how I think about it.

I like to think the world wasn't ready for me, but maybe the truth is that I wasn't ready for the world. I've always arrived too late for my life.

I felt at some point that I had nothing to lose, and [laughs] maybe I was wrong. I think, you know, there's always these little autobiographical secrets behind things. I think I was really attacking my earlier self, and this kind of pretentious figure.

I have always tried to avoid regrets. Could I have done differently some things in my career? Maybe.

I am amazed to see how deliberately I have entangled myself step by step. To have seen my position so clearly, and yet to have acted so like a child!

Christina Stead has a Chinese say, "Our old age is perhaps life's decision about us" or, worse, the decision we have made about ourselves without ever realizing we were making it.

I left acting for 15 years, and I think it's really nice to have another life. I took too much for granted when I was younger. I didn't really want to be an actor. I didn't really love it. And so I made a lot of mistakes. Oddly, I care much more about it now. I feel like a complete novice.

At thirty, man suspects himself a fool; Knows it at forty, and reforms his plan.