It's a miserable life in Hollywood. You're up at five or six o'clock in the morning to be ready to start shooting at nine.

I did grow up in Los Angeles. I actually didn't start acting until I was sixteen, so I was very removed from the Hollywood scene. I had always been in my school plays, but my mom and dad wanted to keep me out of the business until I was old enough to know who I was and not let anyone change me.

For 30 years, which I never talked about in Hollywood, I actually worked with doctors lecturing and doing some medical intuitive counseling both in a medical setting and for the community at large.

It was the only ambition I ever had - not to be a dancer or Hollywood movie star, but to be a housewife in a good marriage.

It devastates me now that I have been reduced to a Hollywood statistic - another joke marriage.

Here in Hollywood you can actually get a marriage license printed on an Etch-A-Sketch.

I was thrilled when I heard about the Time's Up campaign's legal defense fund for women who've experienced harassment and sexism. I'd been longing for this movement to extend beyond Hollywood.

I do think Hollywood is recognizing that there's a craving for it, that there's a huge audience in our country. They want movies that they can bring their families to. They want movies that are going to speak to their heart, in a way that's refreshing to their hearts. And Hollywood is learning that there's money to be made there.

There is a lot of strength and intelligence in Hollywood.

The upper middle class here still has options for entertainment. We have Internet, Hollywood and books. But for the majority and the masses, there is only TV. A lot of them sit at home and watch TV as they can't afford other forms of entertainment. So, we try to do shows which have inspirational value.

At the end of the day, the one commonality that both Hindi cinema and Hollywood share is that they are full of talented and inspirational people. Outside of this, there are many differences, from the scheduling and rehearsal to promotion and directing techniques.

Egyptian comedy has a very, very old tradition. Our theater and our movies are just, like, amazing. And Egypt is kind of like the Hollywood of the Middle East. I mean, we had cinema maybe decades before the other Arab countries ever got independence.

If I make a movie in English, the money will come from Europe, so that I can keep my independence and freedom. The way they produce in Hollywood doesn't fit me.

As a bookish child in Calcutta, I used to thrill to the adventures of bad girls whose pursuit of happiness swept them outside the bounds of social decency. Tess of the d'Urbervilles, Emma Bovary and Anna Karenina lived large in my imagination. The naughty girls of Hollywood films flirted and knew how to drive.

Hollywood is a casino. You have to put your chips on the table and hope for the best.

Hollywood is a cross between a health farm, a recreation center and an insane asylum. It's a company town, and I happen to like the company!

A generation before, it had been sagebrush and coyotes; a generation later, it was a burgeoning movie town. But for that brief idyllic time in 1910, Hollywood looked like the perfect place for a successful writer to settle down, build his dream house, and maybe do some gardening.

It's funny... you can make fun of AIDS or Haiti, but if you make fun of some starlet in Hollywood's looks? That's like the one thing... the line you are not to cross.

Hollywood's just not funny.

The more dollars the studio producers put in, the less freedom we have. If the budget hits $100m, they get scared - they'll take the existing score of a successful movie and expect composers to copy it, like wallpaper. The biggest challenge for any composer in Hollywood is to be as creative as possible within those boundaries.

Fitness for me is a passion. Yes, my profession demands it, but that works more as motivation for me. And, like I get motivated by looking at pictures of Bollywood or Hollywood stars with fab bodies, I want others to take that motivation from me.

For a good workout, I go to At One Fitness in North Hollywood, where my trainer, Jon Allsop, puts me through it all. I like it because it's a small gym and I've known the people for a long time. Jon will have me do cross-training where I'll lift weights, jump rope, throw around a medicine ball and I never get to stop.

I probably don't make as much money as people think I make. I make more than the usual medium household. I'm one of the few middle class actors out there. The microcosm of Hollywood reflects the macrocosm of international finance.

If the Indian people want stories written about themselves, how they want them told, they are going to have to make them, they're going to have to finance them. If you let Hollywood do it, Hollywood is going to get it wrong most of the time.