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When I was sixteen I started acting, and I also started to embrace my tradition and culture. I had a young medicine man interpret for me what it is to be an Indian. He really caught me at a good time because I was really vulnerable after the loss of my parents with all of the feelings of abandonment.

I knew from a young age that I wanted to be an actor. I never even thought about other careers. The acting field is certainly not the path many Indian parents encourage their children to take, but mine were very supportive. They wanted me to have an education, but understood that this is what I wanted to do.

I have always let the lack of Indian actors in the industry drive me, not hold me back. I remember an agent in L.A. telling me a few years ago that an Indian actor wouldn't ever make it in Hollywood, but my ethnicity has helped me.

I learned much more about acting from philosophy courses, psychology courses, history and anthropology than I ever learned in acting class.

Studying acting has been personally enriching because it has taught me to take the time to imagine what someone else's life experience might be like. To look deeply at how our pasts and the circumstances of our early childhoods mold us as people.

Acting has always existed alongside my normal life. It's been a case of learning on the job. I've worked in so many styles, with so many people, so I've picked bits up from everyone and everything.

Acting is an opportunity for me to try to explore and examine and expose humanity's weaknesses that are intrinsic to our nature as humans and learn from them; thereby, it's like a sociological expose.

The one thing I learned the most about acting is it takes a tremendous amount of courage to go there and stand still. It takes courage and guts to step out of your mind frame and depict something.

I knew absolutely nothing about acting, and had to be taught everything. Some people are born naturals and know how to walk, talk and hold themselves. I didn't and had to learn everything.