Gurinder Chadha

“I was a good Indian girl, but naughty in that I would often sneak out of the back door and into the garden and go off with my friends when I should have been at home cooking or cleaning.”

“Our films have the ability to tell global audiences who we are, and this is something the government should feel compelled to protect. My film, 'Bend it Like Beckham,' for example, would not have been made without the backing and support of the U.K. Film Council.”

“Constantly, I've been asked to make a sequel to 'Beckham.' However, I thought a West End show was the proper way to go. Once we made the show, I wanted to make sure that I embraced the West End genre rather than just put the film on stage.”

“I am not afraid to be a pioneer. When a door is ajar, you need to open it fully. And once you are in that room, you need to see what other doors there might be and where they might lead.”

“Third-generation Indians love maintaining their cultural traditions, but they can also go down the pub, shop till they drop, do whatever anyone else does.”

“The only time I used to feel like an outsider was when I first went to India.”

“It's not simply that British films do well at the box office and generate revenue, it's that they provide a window to the world of what Britain and its culture is about.”

“If you tell me I can't do something, that's the worst thing to tell me. And that's what I tell girls, and what Beckham's about: you can do it, you can do it better, and you can do it in the way you want.”

“I went to L.A., and I was on two different studio movies at Fox and Sony, but they were never made in the end. When the second one wasn't happening, I ended up doing an episode of 'Who Do You Think You Are?' for the BBC, and went on a roots trip from England to Kenya, India, and pre-partition India in Pakistan, where my family originally came from.”

“All my films are about kind of being seen to be one thing when you're actually something else, and the power of the female spirit to make things work your way on your terms. Which is what I do.”

“One of the things I want to do with 'Desi Rascals' is go a bit deeper into the characters and their family lives and have a bit more heart and a bit more inter-generational story-telling, so it's not all about young people.”

“You'd be surprised how hard it is getting the human emotional arc in a script to work. Ultimately a director stands and falls by their ability to do that.”

“'Up the Junction' went on to inform my love of British social realism. It was the first film I saw of this ilk, a very stark, visceral reflection of England, an England I didn't necessarily feel a part of but that I knew was out there. You could almost smell the bread and butter and cabbage.”

“The more I make films, the more I feel less inclined to talk about them and just let people watch them. I feel that the pictures are telling the story, and I can't really add anything except just talking about the technicalities of what happened on the day.”

“I knew from an early age that people didn't see the different sides of me. I formulated a kind of bi-cultural identity quite early, and I was always very comfortable with it, but I knew people didn't quite see that.”

“I really thought I couldn't be a mum. We had tried several times with IVF,, and it hadn't worked and we'd given up in a way. We both thought, 'You know what, that's that. It's not going to happen - let's move on.'”

“DVDs have their place, but the cinema is a tangible, emotional experience that I would hate my children not to have.”

“One of the best things about the award season is that when a British film succeeds at the Oscars and BAFTAs, such as 'Slumdog Millionaire' in 2009 and 'The King's Speech' this year, the British public get right behind it with an immense sense of national pride.”

“Once I started writing the screenplay of 'Bride & Prejudice,' I was convinced Jane Austen was a Punjabi in her previous birth.”

“I know it sounds really weedy, but we are all children who seek approval from our parents.”