My family was very supportive of my acting. They didn't really have a choice because I got jobs acting before anyone could really say anything. It paid my way through college and helped my family out.

My first acting job happened by accident when I was really young. I was in fifth grade and my teacher saw an ad in the paper and took me to the audition after school and I got the part.

Part of the work is determining through what instrument you are playing. Actors are physical, olympian storytellers and we should be able to create entire landscapes with nothing.

We make a contract within ourselves as actors or directors or writers about how much of ourselves we let into projects. You can actually figure out before you work on something how much blood you will have to let emotionally.

I like the theatre because you paint with broad strokes. To me the theatre is stretching its definition really far.

The loneliness is when you pick up and move, even if you are not originally from that place, and you have some memories that you want to embrace. Having a life in transit, I feel like you are always looking out the back window.

All India radio was worldwide.

I want to present interesting stories that don't qualify themselves just by virtue of their ethnographic type.

America makes up its own mind about what it wants to see.

I applied to American Repertory School up at Harvard at got in.

I got heavily into the drum-and-bass scene, which is really wicked.

I had been working early in my life in films - since I was 11.

I hear music as narrative.

I knew I was happy when I was dancing.

I love films for the fact that it is like working under a microscope. It is sort of like a laboratory.

I think that I have sold out sometimes.

I think that rap is narrative, when it's done right.

In every character I play, I try to imbibe something. Every film is a learning process for me.

It is important to keep your head up and follow what you believe is right.

It is important to make your own stuff. Even if you are not an actor, it is important to not stop involving yourself as a creative person.