Class is often invisible in America in the movies, and usually not the subject of the film.
I feel very fortunate that I was able to be cast in roles that showed the humanity, if you will, of usually stereotypical Indian characters that made up a lot of film, like the Pawnee in 'Dances with Wolves.'
How often do we see a Muslim woman who is intelligent and independent, and has a voice of her own and is career-driven, on American TV?
I always say that cinema reflects life, not the other way round.
I believe Fabio Celoni's work vividly brings to life not only the mountains, the bazaars, the city of Kabul and its kite-dotted skies, but also the many struggles, conflicts, and emotional highs and lows of Amir's journey [from the The Kite Runner].
I never hear white writers get asked, 'Do you worry about how you represent white people?'
There's very few shows that truly reflect specific ethnic experiences, and when they come and come right, they're a hit.
It was my effort, in depicting the West, to depict it as it was.
Movies don't necessarily change culture. I don't know if we know for sure if movies change culture but we know for sure that they reflect culture.
There's enough of a willingness in the West to do sympathetic movies about Arab roles.
My book had a universal theme. It's not a "racial" novel. It portrays an aspect of civilization, not necessarily Southern civilization.
The box office has become global. I think that factors in to the question of how to portray different ethnicities and cultures.
For a novelist, it’s kind of an onerous burden to represent an entire culture. That said, I’m in a unique position to speak on behalf of Afghanistan on certain issues that I feel are important, particularly the issue of Afghan refugees.
Among the writers of antiquity there are none who instruct us more openly in the manners of their respective times in which they lived than those who have employed themselves in satire, under whatever dress it may appear.
More Asians need to be on television as a positive role model.
I try to represent Africa and Cameroon as well as I can.
If you write a lovely story about India, you're criticized for selling an exotic version of India. And if you write critically about India, you're seen as portraying it in a negative light - it also seems to be a popular way to present India, sort of mangoes and beggars.
I wanted to try to create characters that happen to be Asian but who are pretty different from those we generally see in our culture, in our commercial culture.
For years, I'd go to the movies and see guys doing Boston accents and think, 'Oh please, God, I hope I never have to do that.'
If you think of human experience as a pie, then the wedge Hollywood is reflecting now is getting smaller and smaller.
I think people in the U.K. should be concerned about the under-representation of BAME actors in TV and Film, because it is an incorrect reflection of our society.
For a novelist, it's kind of an onerous burden to represent an entire culture.
The great quality of the 'Three Kingdoms' is that it seems to encapsulate and portray every facet of the Chinese personality.
I felt pretty good growing up. I didn't feel a lot of prejudice or racism. But I do remember, if there was going to be a movie or a television show with Asian characters, I would go out of my way to avoid them, because they portrayed all Asians as either ridiculously good or ridiculously bad; you know, the whole Charlie Chan-Fu Manchu thing.
If an art has for its function to represent manners and people, I do not see how it can avoid systematizing its sensibility to the extent of showing some figures much as Molière, for instance, did, as absurd or detestable.
