Always just remember that you can never know all; you’re always going to be learning; there’s always going to be something new. I don’t think you’ll ever have it all figured out.

I like a fresh face. I like clean skin. Fresh skin, cute color on the lip, cat eye, mascara, and I’m good to go!

When ‘Midnight’s Children’ came out, people in the West tended to respond to the fantasy elements in the novel, to praise it in those terms. In India, people read it like a history book.

Meaningful work, creative work, thoughtful work, important work – this type of effort takes stretches of uninterrupted time to get into the zone. But in the modern office such long stretches just can’t be found. Instead, it’s just one interruption after another.

Life is to blame for everything.

In the fairy tale, an incomprehensible happiness rests upon an incomprehensible condition. A box is opened and all evils fly out. A word is forgotten and cities perish. A lamp is lit and love flies away. An apple is eaten and the hope of God is gone.

If I cannot offer some relief to our world, if I cannot inspire our generation to join me, then I feel I am a complete waste of space. This constant fear of feeling irrelevant in our society has been the catalyst behind all my efforts and passions for as long as I can remember.

When I was younger, me and my brother got a video camera, and he used to direct and I used to act. We used to make these silly, stupid short films, which, looking back now, were probably horrible.

I do actually have a connection with James Herriot because we went to school in the same area. I went to Hillhead Primary School in the West End of Glasgow and he went to Hillhead Secondary.

My mom was always keen I stayed in school and got good grades, and she was always keen for me to do medicine. I used to go to drama classes when I was younger, and she would always take me. But when I got to an age when I decided it was what I wanted to do, when she accepted it, she had actually been the most supportive person ever.

I remember my first actor that I really, really fell in love with was Tom Hanks. I suppose when I was growing up and getting more serious about acting, at that point, he was the biggest actor in the world.

Always just remember that you can never know all; you’re always going to be learning; there’s always going to be something new. I don’t think you’ll ever have it all figured out.