Actor

People say they don't want to call a call-centre in India. Why not? They're doing the same job - you just don't like Indians.

Paul Verhoeven is one of my favourite directors. I love his ability to mash extreme violence with humour and satire.

Generating comic material can sometimes get the better of you.

My signature dish is a khoresht fesenjan. It's a stew with pomegranate and walnuts.

I'm the guy that can play all the different races and get away with it.

Thank God for my imagination. For my abilities to mimic.

Character building is one of my favourite things to do.

As an ethnic actor, I still feel I can't be in 'Downton Abbey' or in period dramas.

I've never sat down and written jokes. I wouldn't know how to.

I want to be James Bond! I don't want to be Doctor Who.

I look at my early career, and you know, when I left drama school, for a young Asian actor, you could either play a doctor on 'Holby City,' or you could play a terrorist in 'Spooks' and get to wear a nice shiny suit.

I miss watching TV and thinking they were all real. I used to feel like that about 'Neighbours.'

I'm good at winding up British people, but Americans are slightly different. A lot of them are more stoical. They're harder to get a reaction out of more of the time.

I have been 'absorbing' people - their voices, their mannerisms - all my life, to the point where I am a sort of Frankenstein of different people. My own speaking voice is, in fact, a mixture of how my two best mates speak, because they are cool, and I am not.

Being funny was something I was doing before I understood what that even was. Now I'm making a career out of it.

My characters are much more famous than I am, so I don't crave attention; I just crave working and doing good work. Having a feeling of self-worth.

'Cuban Fury' was a big production for a first time director to handle: I think it is very easy to become very stressful and for it to get the better of you.

I just want to keep doing my comedy work because that's what I do. I made a name for myself playing other characters.

I had to fool the world into accepting me. I didn't seem to fit the mould of my idols.

Just acting on someone else's set feels like a holiday, almost.