Quotes

This industry is for fighters and those who do not give up! It is very important to believe in yourself. Even when a hundred people rejected me, I did not lose hope and, finally, one of the biggest directors of all times [Danny Boyle] believed in me! Also working in this film [Slumdog Millionaire (2008)] has taught me a lot, not just in terms of acting but also about myself, which is an integral part of being a good actor!

I'm just so used to calling it Bombay. I know everything has changed. It's India's way of trying to brush off colonialism and make it what it originally was, but unfortunately for me I called it Bombay for 16 years, and I think that's a long time in a 26-year-old's life to automatically start calling it Mumbai. It's very confusing for a lot of people. My agent thought Bombay and Mumbai were two different places. And I was like, "No, it's the same thing."

[on preparing to play a primatologist in La planète des singes : Les origines (2011)] Like most people, I only knew what I'd been taught in school about chimps, and that's not enough. So I watched a ton of videos about Jane Goodall, who I'd love to meet. All her research was fascinating and so useful, especially in how she studied human behavior in comparison to chimp behavior.

I call upon women to raise each other up, to make each other's welfare a priority and to never shame a woman for the choices she makes