While growing up, I always wanted to see myself on the big screen - more so because there were no laptops then, and viewing on mobile was a far-fetched dream.

I would never want to be treated as a prop, to be looked on as an object just because of my gender.

I always knew from books and shows that the lives of circus artists are not easy, but spending time and learning from them made me realise the amount of effort they put in and how they constantly jostle between life and death.

As an actor, your whole body needs to be expressive, and unless you know the language, your expressions will not match the character you are playing. So, I am learning Tamil to the fullest.

My inspiration for writing is all the wonderful books that I read as a child and that I still read. I think that for those of us who write, when we find a wonderful book written by someone else, we don't really get jealous, we get inspired, and that's kind of the mark of what a good writer is.

Whether it's an $11 flip-flop or a $2 key ring or a $2,000 dress, they're all done with integrity. They're all done with a design sense. As long as the creativity exists, then I don't think it's a sellout. A sellout is putting your name on any piece of crap and then expecting people to buy it because it's got your name on it.

The Polar Express is about faith, and the power of imagination to sustain faith. It's also about the desire to reside in a world where magic can happen, the kind of world we all believed in as children, but one that disappears as we grow older.

My birth mom has certainly not lived a life of means in any stretch of the imagination, nor does she want to.