I'm a good Indian girl, I still don't do sex scenes in my movies because my mum would kill me!

I'm a good Indian girl, I still don't do sex scenes in my movies because my mum would kill me!

If a good actor wants a role, they'll do whatever it takes to get the part. Directors are the same. We do 'meetings', not auditions: that tells you a whole lot more about an actor, too.

There's so many people telling you what you should look like, what you shouldn't look like, what clothes you should be wearing, whether you're too fat or too thin, you're hair should be this shape... you're bombarded. So, I like films that show girls going through that quagmire and coming out the other side really confident in themselves and strong in themselves.

When you have a baby you start thinking of death cuz' you see the opposite of life. I've calmed down now but for the first or two years, I kept thinking: "Oh my God, if I die what's going to happen to the child?" And you realise how vulnerable they are, but how critical your own life is because they're so dependent on you. You do feel your own mortality. I kept saying to myself: "OK, when they're 18, I'll be 'x'; so if they get married at 30, I'll be'x'will I get to see grandchildren?" So, since they've been born I've been thinking about death the whole time.

It doesn't matter how complex your plot or your characters are; you have to be able to express the big idea of a film in a sentence or two.

The reason I do what I do is that I find that Asian community gives me an endless source of humour. When I entered the filmmaking business, my whole purpose was to promote and make us visible because we were very much on the margins. So, I wanted to make us mainstream. My work has helped to mainstream-ise the Asian community.