My hopes and aspirations haven't changed since I started in this business. They've been to be able to play drama, to be able to play comedy, to be able to play leading men, and to be able to play character roles. I have no other aspirations in this regard.
I have played old ladies since I was 17 years old, and very convincingly. I've always looked funny and was too tall to play the leads and so had to play the grandmothers.
I had already played a lead on Broadway before I ever did a film. I had had three, four seasons of stock with good, fat parts, good supporting and leading parts. And I had done, oh, God, over 400 live TV shows.
Well, I'm a character actor, and actually throughout my life I've... I have relatively speaking played few heroic leads, but I've done it.
There were so many lead roles available when I was in my thirties. Once I hit 45, there was a real downturn. But I got an incredibly provocative, delicious lead role in a television series called 'Saving Grace,' and I loved the character.
'Born to play? Hmmm. Probably Romeo... or Hamlet, I guess. Also, I'd be a great Alexander the Great.
First of all, the leads aren't the kind of acting work that I like. The parts that are meatier are not the ones that have to have a romance.
Character actors just pile up the credits because you work on a movie for, like, a few days. It's not like I'm the lead in everything I do - far from it. I'm not spending three or four months on a picture; I'm spending three or four weeks. Sometimes three or four days.
The difference between a beautifully made failure and a beautifully made hit is who you've got playing the leads.
I've done over 100 auditions, but I was lucky to stumble onto the Internet as it was growing. Because in film, people are not looking at casting completely unknown faces as lead roles.
It wasn't my intention in going after this part but I suppose now I do. The adult roles are a lot meatier - you're not always just the daughter or the girlfriend or whatever.
I had always wanted to be an actress. I went to summer theater camp from kindergarten on up until high school, and always had the leads in all the plays - even though they were at the YMCA - but it was something I always wanted to do.
There seems to be more opportunities for old guys like me to do a little fighting and running because the lead characters also require a bit of depth and maturity and gravitas that one is likely to acquire doing drama all those years.
I'm an actor who wants to do great parts, and I've been very fortunate, for a long time, to get meaty roles, and sometimes some of them are meatier than others.
In the 1980s, there was no category to stick me in. 'He sounds too smart' is what I was hearing. I realized that I had to become a member of the school of what I call 'ugly acting.' Which meant I wanted to do what Dustin Hoffman did very successfully: to play character roles, but lead character roles.
I have been fortunate in my career to play a lot of lead roles. The downside to that is I don't have a life outside of the show. I go on lockdown even with my wife if the show is really difficult and I am having vocal problems.
Dr. Larry and Viki are the only original characters left on the show.
'Badmaash Company' and 'Delhi Belly' was about friends, and I was part of the gang. And yes, they did have stars playing the lead! You do need a star to sell a film; and playing the second lead doesn't bother me.
It's better to play negative lead roles than portray just any other character on the show.
Every actor wants to do a love story, and courtesy T-Series, I got to do two back-to-back.
I'm not intimidated by lead roles. I'm better in them. I don't feel pressure. I feel released at times like that. That's what I'm born to do.
I've been really lucky in the work that I have done so far, to work with good female actors in lead roles. Lisa McCune in 'Blood Brothers' and Claudia Karvan in 'Spirited' and then Susie Porter in 'Sisters of War.' They've been working, and they've got good lives around them as well.
I have played lead roles, supporting roles and also miniscule roles in my career so far, and have never been image conscious.
I'd love to do more Tamil films; unfortunately, I don't get any substantial roles.
If you work with big stars, then they become the lead actors. It's not that I don't want to do films with big stars, but I would rather do the films where I get the title roles.
