I was told, 'Your career's made by what you don't do,' and that always stuck with me. I drive my agent mad!
Dates with actors, finally, just seemed to me evenings of shop talk. I got sick of it after a hile. So the more famous I became, the more I narrowed down my choices.
Some people thought that I was crazy for declining a lot of offers while I was filming 'SKTKS,' but I have waited patiently because I knew I had a winning hand.
When you learn what you can live without, you are able to ask life for the very best because you possess the gift of discernment. You are able to create an authentic life because you are able to make conscious choices.
I turn a lot of stuff down - big, big movies, the kind I wouldn't want to go to the cinema to see.
I'm very picky about what I'll do and the message the film has in it.
I love performing, and it allows me to be very discerning about what I choose next, thank god.
I have been saying 'no' to many projects ever since people accepted Malar from the movie 'Premam.'
I'm really picky with my girlfriends.
I haven't done many commercials, and I'm very picky about it because it comes down to creative control.
Here's what I had: I had the arrogance of saying I'd like to be in a 'good' movie, so in fact, when I was hot, I turned down a lot of stuff because I didn't think I wanted to watch it.
I want to be choosier. I can't let quality take a back seat... not after 'Kaaka Muttai.'
I want to experiment. That is why I only sign the movies I believe in.
I'm not jumping into anything fast. I'm an actor that likes to choose my work and there's an element of good taste to my work.
If the past decade was the decade of searching and finding and looking for stuff, this coming decade is going to be the decade of filtering and going to your friends for recommendations.
I turned down as many roles that I thought were beyond my abilities as I did ones I thought weren't good enough.
Start from scratch with Jesus every day and then be picky about what you add to your life.
I also feel like the kinds of jobs I want right now - I consider them aspirational. I want to raise the bar for myself, and I am in this interesting spot where I do get offered a lot of things, but frankly, the majority of the things I get offered I'm not really interested in doing. I want to do the things that I have to fight for.
As a director, there's no natural career progression. So after 'The Wackness,' which was very personal to me, I was very, very picky about what I was going to do next, to the point where I think that I was almost too picky.
I still love being creative. I still love the aspects of working together with great, talented people. But it's a weird dichotomy; I'm being blessed with more opportunities, but I'm going to be taking less of them.
Right around 2004 when 'Ray' came out, I made a conscious decision to be more discerning because I thought to myself, 'After something like this, I really have to try to be strong enough to turn stuff down.'
