A biography for Naseeruddin Shahhasn’t been written yet.
“Unfortunately, in our country, crying is mistaken for good acting.”
“I am totally for first timers. I always hear them seriously. I have done so many films with first timers, and I've never regretted it.”
“People think I am joking when I say my favourite actors are Shammi Kapoor and Dara Singh.”
“Somehow, Hindi movies never took me in the same way Hollywood films did. Even at the age of five or six, I could see the difference in the quality of execution.”
“One would marvel on the screen the way Shammi Kapoor walked, Dilip Kumar cried, or seeing Dev Anand's style. And then, one day, you are in the same space with them. It's very unreal.”
“A family business in cinema is not necessarily creative. It is generally about prolonging your family fortune.”
“Learning a craft is up to you, whether you are doing theatre or movies.”
“As an actor, you have got to learn your job as thoroughly as you can. If you know your job, then there's nothing that can stop you. Because the bottom line is that only good actors will get work.”
“The ballooning budgets of Bollywood are getting out of hand, and it's important for people to realise that you don't need Rs 20 crore to make a good, commercially viable film.”
“I don't think anybody becomes an actor to serve theatre or to serve art anywhere. We all become actors because we are insecure people who want to be looked at. That was the reason I became an actor.”
“Sometimes, more money is spent on promotion of a film than the making of it. I don't understand that logic. The movie should run on its merit.”
“I do what work I get. I'm disappointed half the time.”
“You can't make a film for your personal satisfaction. That is why I detest the cinema of people like Mani Kaul.”
“I realise that I have made quite a few of the same mistakes with my kids that my dad made: not so much in trying to determine their lives for them but in terms of trying to discipline them.”
“Any youngster who comes to me and says he wants to act, I tell him to complete his education first because, for too long, uneducated actors have ruled the roost in the acting world.”
“'Bombay Boys' is among my favourite movies and my favourite performance of myself.”
“The stuff that is done on Broadway is hardly theatre. It is part magic show, part rock concert, and part conjuring things.”
“My relationship with my father still troubles me because it never got resolved, and there was no closure. There was a lot of bitterness, but having written about it, I found that I was able to overcome that bitterness and look at the relationship anew.”
“There's so much hocus-pocus about acting styles; there's too much mysticism attached to it. But it's a craft like any other - it's something you have to work hard at.”
“I've always found people with physical disabilities interesting to watch: how the dynamics of their body work, what makes them move this way or that.”