I believe the gift of acting is a gift from God, my oath to God, and I want to make sure on a daily basis that it is honed and deeply spiritual... I want to believe that the audience believes that my acting comes from this special place.
The first time I went behind the camera was in 1993. I felt, 'This is my thing,' and I knew that someday I'd make a feature.
Being the son of a filmmaker, you are aware of a career as a director. You don't think of it as just movies, but as a life.
I knew very early that somehow I would sing and draw and paint my whole life.
I think of fiction as the highest calling. I'm kind of addicted to it. It's the thing that has gotten me through all the hard points in my life.
Writers always say, 'I always knew I wanted to be a writer; when I was a three-month-old foetus a pen formed in my hand and I began to scratch my first story on the inside of my mother's womb.' I started later, in my early twenties.
I knew I wanted to be a writer before I knew that being a writer was possible.
I brought all the instincts of a writer with me into the monastery.
One doesn't choose to become a writer. One is just born that way.
I knew that I wanted to be a writer even before I knew exactly what being a writer entailed.
I think I must write a book. It has been my cherished dream and I feel an influence that I cannot resist calling me to the task.
After being in the studio, I realized this is how I want to be. It just feels right.
I never really wanted to be a writer. I know it sounds strange, but I honestly believe that I didn't pick the story; the story has picked me. I've written absolutely no fiction before 'The Immortals of Meluha.' Not even a short story in school - absolutely nothing.
I could never even entertain the notion that it's an option, to not be an artist.
I always find it fascinating to ask people, why they've chosen to live their life as an artist? Why be an actor, a singer, an author, a filmmaker? I've heard such inspiring answers to that question.
One day, it hit me that music is my calling. I just started playing and writing music. How, I don't know. I just started doing it, and then this big voice came out of my mouth. And it felt like I was releasing something.
I don't know if I have a memory of not thinking I was a writer - it goes that far back. I went to law school because I didn't know how to earn a living otherwise. I tried to ignore the pull, but it wouldn't let me.
And, so, when I picked up the guitar, suddenly, just playing a couple of notes really, really spoke to me. It was almost like I should have been doing it prior to that. You know, it was something that just felt really natural.
I am called to listen to the sound of my own heart -- to write the story within myself that demands to be told at that particular point in my life. And if I do this faithfully, clothing that idea in the flesh of human experience and setting it in a true place, the sound from my heart will resound in the reader's heart.
I could have made it as a singer, but I went with acting - surrendered to it, in a way.
I'm first and foremost a writer. I followed my personal legend, my childhood dream of becoming a writer, but I can't say why I'm one.
I'm a Christian, but I'm just an artist. I'm a musician.
I really believe that what I do as an actress is my God-given talent. This is my calling, not my career.
Really it was the first time in my life that I recognised that acting is, I'm just going to say it, I am an artist, I have to do this, I have to do this.
The more you love your art/ calling/ enterprise, the more important its accomplishment to the evolution of your soul, the more you will fear it and the more Resistance you will experience facing it.
