Lavrenti Lopes

I come from an everyday middle class family in India. The film industry reached us only through our television sets and cinema halls.

Prejudices and preferences exist and will continue to. When you learn how to market yourself, you become less of a victim.

I admire Meryl Streep and Dustin Hoffman for their sheer dedication to their craft.

As a child I wanted to be everything from a doctor, lawyer, flight attendant to an IT pro- fessional and could never make up my mind. I figured as an actor I’d get to play all these professions.

Mumbai is home, so there’s no comparison. But then again, New York’s a lot like Mumbai, which is why I choose to live there. It’s fast, crowded (in a good way), the people are friendly and it’s full of color and race, like Mumbai. Unfortunately, the traffic’s also just as bad.

The roles for South Asians may have increased by a decent number but there has been a negligible change in the quality of these roles. We still have to fight stereotypes. Fortunately, I’ve had the priviledge of working with people who look beyond the color of your skin.

I think I was 8 or 9 when I did my first play. It was at a community level, but that’s when I knew that this is what I loved doing.