Vir Das Quotes

Being an indie queen, people think I have all these choices. Like I've just been sitting around waiting for the best indie film that I deem acceptable.

In terms of being typecast, if you do something like Father Ted that infiltrates the public's imagination to the extent that it did, I think realistically you're not going to be asked to do something radically different from that very often. But it's not a problem.

There hasn't been one moment in my career where I felt I didn't have any control over the creative aspects of my records.

If I only acted, I feel like I wouldn't have enough creative expression over my own sensibility, and also if I only acted, the notion of surrendering my fate and future to other people is deeply unsettling to me and it would make me uncomfortable.

I'm rebelling against being handed a career, like, 'You're the next this; you're the next that.' I'm not the next anything, I'm the first me. I can't be myself, I can't just be Idris Elba. But that's just the nature of the business.

If you do a character that resonates enough, people are always going to see you as that character. It will just be up to me to make choices where I can flex other muscles.

The only place that I'd be worried about being typecast is the independent film world.

I could be making a lot more money now if I had chosen a different kind of movie, but none of that matters to me... I've done the parts I wanted to do.

Once you become tagged as anything, it becomes difficult to shake it, because the less imaginative people in the business want you to do what worked for the last guy. That's always been something I've had to deal with.

Some things are very low profile, but if they excite me creatively, I accept them. Sometimes there are high-profile projects, and you have to do it. We all have human limitations. It is a painful decision to turn things down. Even accepting 'Slumdog Millionaire' was a decision that I had to sacrifice another project.

No not pigeon holed me as an actor, or as a character, or as to what I could do - but what I would do... and the fact is the things you don't do are almost as important as as the things that you do.

I turned down a lot of things that were so-called commercial. You're coming out of one film, and then they want you to be in the same one.

Being a young actor in the industry, I had a lot of people who strongly advised me to stay quiet. That was hard to live with. But I've never played a gay role before, and I didn't want to be limited by some strange perception.

I just do what I want to do, and if it's a rather interesting script - which I found.

I can only control what I can, which is what I'm able to do as an artist.

I sort of went 'Oh, great. I'm getting these great roles and I love doing them, but I'm going to be Anthony Perkins for the rest of my life.'

All I am looking for is a fine combination of critical and commercial acclaim. Whether conventional or unconventional - does not matter.

Even bigger directors like Mani Ratnam and Ram Gopal Varma have faced flak, that doesn't mean they've shied away from filmmaking.

It's nice to stretch in different directions and use different muscles. You can get swallowed into Hollywood, where it's all about bums on seats and how commercial a film is.

Nobody will tell you that you're typecast until your films aren't working; if it's working, they'll call it your 'zone.'

It's not like I wakeup everyday and say, 'You know what, I need to do a horror film.' Statistically it's only like forty percent of my output but it's a great ride and the fan base is really dedicated and that's always cool. When you're lucky enough to be in a good one it's fantastic.

Nobody ever thought of me as dumb. They always knew me as cerebral, a thinking person. Educated and so on. But I was always given glamorous roles.

Generally, I feel I'm cast aside because of the kind of movies that I make.

I am trying to be true to the work that I want to do and be allowed to make the choices that I want to make.

I've seen Chance and the Social Experiment build their own careers in the way that's most authentic to them.