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.

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.

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.

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