The reason why I returned to dance is simply because I love dance. I had also promised myself that I wanted to make more sense of dance, study and understand it far more in detail.

As an actress I am totally open to offers as an individual and want to treat every opportunity with same spirit.

When the women in any other film industry are almost equal to men, in Malayalam only one or two women are among the crew.

I would love to do Malayalam films.

As an artiste, you get a high when you are given roles that are challenging.

As an actor, I just made the most of the opportunities that came my way and I owe it to my directors for having given me characters with substance, as I have never gone around asking for a role.

Three months after reaching the U.S., hurricane Sandy struck, and I had to spend four days in the university shelter. Though I have worked for projects on environment displacement in the past, it was the first time that I actually experienced one and understood how attached one can be to your regular shelter.

I want to be the Guru Dutt of the world.

I want to leave a deep impact of my acting in people's mind.

I have always been a pan-Indian actress with pan-Indian taste.

I have not tried enough to be in Bollywood.

I love food and love cooking.

Language is not a barrier, specially Hindi. It is the only language I read, write and speak in and so it is far easier than South Indian languages.

I sign films that have significance for my characters or are big entertainers.

Our lives are better when we make the right choices through a heightened awareness of the world around us.

However vain our entire political class or organizations are, in the name of cynicism we cannot bend towards authoritarian populism.

I believe the #Metoo movement is here to stay.

There is a certain fictional element that goes in playing a common person.

When you see the phase of 60s and 70s, the craze for Dev Anand and actors of that era, it still exists in south. The craze is huge but that's also for stars like Rajinikanth, Kamal Haasan and Mohanlal, especially for male stars.

Nowhere in the world will you find a cowboy speaking in Tamil.

I don't do movies for the awards. The awards are made for the films. The films are not made for the awards.

I am never disappointed in life in not getting any awards: it is the movies which keep me going, not the awards.

No one can insist me to wear skimpy costumes and to act in steamy scenes just for the sake of pulling more audience to cinema halls.

In director V K Prakash's 'Poppins,' I'll reprise the same role I did in its Kannada version.