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It's been interesting to see how similar audiences in the East and West are, actually, and how it makes you realize that when politicians emphasize the differences between our cultures, it's usually because it benefits them more so than us.

In the West, people tend to look at life as spectators, but in the East, people are the thing.

Of course we've been fighting against stereotypes from Day One at East West. That's the reason we formed: to combat that, and to show we are capable of more than just fulfilling the stereotypes - waiter, laundryman, gardener, martial artist, villain.

The typical Western is kind of a good-guy/bad-guy thing, and that's great, but initially when I heard about 'Into the West,' and what I love about it is it delves into both sides of our cultural past, and it puts more of a human face on the Native Americans.

The present aristocracy of western culture, at the moment when it most clearly dominates the world, is being imitated rapidly and successfully in every eastern country.

In countries other than Pakistan - I won't necessarily call them 'Western' - people support me. This is because people there respect others. They don't do this because I am a Pashtun or a Punjabi, a Pakistani, or an Iranian, they do it because of one's words and character. This is why I am being respected and supported there.

All the traditional westerns are about choice and the individual. When progress comes it's much more difficult to define the individual in that world.

I am a Westerner of Westerners!

I've made the film 'The Good, the Bad, the Weird,' which was an Eastern Western film. Obviously, the Western film is American and American only; there's really no Western genre over in Asia.

I am a Westerner. We're not going to change the West by going East. The East has a lot to teach us, but essentially it's like a mirror, saying, hey, can't you see what's here in your own religion, what are you, stupid?