A biography for Naseeruddin Shahhasn’t been written yet.
“There was a time when I only wanted to show off, but as I've grown older, I've realised that acting isn't an end in itself. You act to communicate something, and if you have to use an accent or become thin or fat, that's part of your job.”
“Humans are the only ones who are the custodians of other people's morals.”
“When I see an emotion being enacted by a great actor, I always feel I can never do that.”
“It's completely beyond comprehension that you just can't say anything without offending somebody or the other.”
“My dream is to produce a generation of actors who realise what the function of an actor in a movie is supposed to be.”
“Nowhere else, perhaps, is the Quran recited so much and understood so little as in India.”
“I think our cinema has stayed in its adolescent stage largely because of our obsession with and our dependence upon stars to make our movies. The stars, being only too human, realise that this is the case, and so they milk it for whatever it's worth, and who can blame them?”
“I'm not trying to prove myself a great filmmaker. I don't know much about filmmaking anyway. I'm trying my hand at it to see if I'm any good.”
“From playwrights I had never heard of and performance forms I had never seen to sculpture and painting, I gained immense experience as an actor in National School of Drama (NSD). I discovered what discipline and good taste in the theatre means.”
“The only serious function films can serve is to act as a record of their times.”
“It was the '70s when mediocrity came in Hindi films. That's when the actor called Rajesh Khanna joined the industry. For all his success, I think Mr. Khanna was a very limited actor. In fact, he was a poor actor.”
“I don't scoff at the desire to make good movies. I scoff at the quality at poseurs masquerading as masters of the medium.”
“I have done practically everything that I wanted to do in my life.”
“Hindi cinema has only one religion, and that's money.”
“An actor's job is to find variations of the same emotion in his being so that every time he expresses grief or joy, it doesn't look the same.”
“I am hard put to think of a single positive thing that commercial Hindi cinema has achieved.”
“I have the highest regard for the police forces.”
“I don't look at my work as an avenue for generating more work. For me, my work itself is sufficient.”
“When we finally become total slaves of mobile phones, then maybe theatre will die.”
“When I first dreamt of becoming a movie star, I wanted to be a Gary Cooper: I wanted to be rich and famous, living in palaces and wearing dark glasses and white suits.”