When I came to Mumbai, I knew that I am an actor but I am not a working actor. To keep this actor alive, I had to feed him, I took up the casting job so that I can run my house.

I'll always be very proud of giving Priyanshu Painyuli and Siddhant Chaturvedi their first break. Both are phenomenal actors and I am very excited about their future.

Then there is Abhimanyu Ray, Honey Trehan, Nandini Srikanth, Shanoo Sharma, we have so many great casting directors who have nothing to do with acting. You just need to have a great eye to understand the character.

No, I don't think it is required for casting directors to be actors too. My mentor Gautam Kishanchandani cannot act to save his life!

The thing with the film industry is if you become popular in one kind of role, you keep getting cast in the same thing.

You are as good as your co-actor.

When I came to Mumbai to act and it didn't work out for me for few years, I thought I will go back to training but casting room has been a great training space for me.

For me, it was always that one extra job that you do to survive in the industry. I also realised that I was not well-sculpted as an actor because I was getting a lot of rejections. I stopped acting and focused on casting.

That's the beauty of creative industry that when one thing does not pan out, you have other things to do.

I always think of my characters as alive human beings and try to generate questions around their life and understand their socio-political background. It was a lot of questioning and reading.