What I feel is great acting might be rubbish for another filmmaker. There is no right or wrong way to do it. It all boils down to the trust between an actor and a director.

I work with actors who fit the bill. I have worked with Abhishek in 'Yuva,' 'Guru' and 'Raavan' because he was the perfect choice.

With each film, you are still trying to get the length and measure right. And failure is all about others' perception of you. When you have one success, they think you know it all. But if you fail, they think they know it all.

Education is so important.

I don't have to stand back as an outsider to look at society.

I wish I had gone to a film school.

When you break new grounds and try to do something different, it's always a high. I remember the first time we did a whole song in slow motion with lipsync for 'Geetanjali.' It was not prevalent at that time. We just had a method and we tried to do that. We weren't sure whether it was going to work, but that is the kind of risk you take.

It doesn't matter which genre you're working in, you try to find an honest relationship within that space, and say if it's the romance genre, within that you have to find a story and characters that resonate with an audience.

If you look at any film fest, the setting gives it colour. Be it Goa, Cannes or even Berlin in the winter, the setting makes these festivals special and gives it a definition.

A written word gets preserved in so many forms. But movies which comprise of both audio and visuals have to be done with care and a lot more details.

Format is just the language. Content is the only thing that is important. Form is like handwriting. Whether you write in a scribble or clean handwriting or type it, the content remains the same. You want to write in clean hand, in a kind of a clear format only because it is aesthetically pleasing. I can scribble, that's also fine.

I'm not saying that every song has to be an all-time hit or the greatest ever music. That's not what you should set out to do. But you have to find out what will work best for a particular story or theme or backdrop, and discuss how not to make it a cliche or fall into such traps.

I don't know why my leading men have grey shades. Maybe I am trying to explore that side of me through them.

Any good film you see gives you enough motivation and adrenaline rush to produce good content, while a bad film can get you so angry that you produce even better content.

A film is between you and the audience. The distributors are the only people in between us. It is a straight equation.

Every time you make a film, you want to do it in a genre that is different from your previous film, so that there is something fresh about it.

Sometimes in a large family, you get taken to a movie and there just isn't enough space or not enough tickets and you get left out. Those are the movies you remember because you never got to see them!

Can I call up any actor in Mumbai? I can, and they can say wrong number and hang up!

I am more comfortable with Tamil than Hindi.

What is film-making about if not romance?

When I am making a film, it's very instinctive, it's not preset.

Whatever film you do, even if it's a children's film, you do with the same amount of sincerity.

I enjoy making all kinds of films. I love action films, war films, period films, adventure films.

Seeing any film after I have made it is difficult.