Kalki Koechlin: It's so easy to judge somebody | [ ENGLISH SPEECH ] | Learn English with Subtitles

[Music] so kalki i want to talk about identity what is identity to you i mean you have you have an amazing mix of backgrounds to be here so tell me your background and your mix and your identity if i figure it out i'll let you know right now i have no idea i as you know i was born in south india my parents are both french but i grew up all my life in india lived here all my life they've been here for 40 years so basically my skin is white and my heart is brown say something in a language you feel comfortable with tamil tamil so when you do do you ever have situations where somebody says something in tamil yeah not knowing you understand very very often i mean i've had very entertaining conversations happen right in front of me two boys you know commenting on on me saying you know and not i mean they can be taken as flattering or slightly you know lewd comments that they'll be making about me and then at the end of their conversation i'll say something in tamil and that jaw drops open and they're like oh my god so yeah that happens that happens uh quite a lot yeah so you obviously raised here went to a boarding school what were you like as a kid i mean for an actor we always think of people who are exuberant excited out there were you like the popular czech in school or what were you like when you're growing up not at all i was uh i was very very painfully shy i i i you know i grew up in a school which was this british school in south india at english medium school when i first got there i had a french accent because i was six years old and as at home i spoke french so i used to say things like concumber for cucumber and you know people used to really make fun of that so i quickly like changed that and became very you know normal in the way i spoke or whatever and then you know my tamil like sort of took a back seat as well because english was like cool and everything so there were all these things where i you know i was i think since a very young age trying very hard to just be be what i you know what everybody else wants me to be i was always quiet i was very uh you know shy i never really you know expressed what i felt and things like that and uh and i was i had braces for like five years so you know i had no chance with most of the boys and uh i think the the way that i was to protect myself was by being a clown by by making people laugh you know so that was my kind of barrier that was my way of you know making friends and not not really showing people my my insecurities or what i was really inside so from this painfully shy girl to take on the most daring roles in dave d i mean that's quite a stretch so what was it what made you decide you want to be an actress maybe tell us a little bit about did you have a struggle before you wanted to become an actress or was it easy for you it was a long struggle uh it was a long struggle convincing my mother that i'm not insane really from a from a young age i always was was the one place where i could just go and do something and become a character was was on stage you know so in school we used to have drama productions and suddenly i was you know somebody else and it was very liberating for me seeing as i don't know who i am myself and then when i grew up and uh suddenly i had to you know become an adult and do something with my life i i don't take myself seriously enough to do something serious so you know like everything i do i to do it with some fun and and and also really i don't take myself seriously like you know i'm the first person to laugh at myself and things so i think this this was for me just the first thing that came to mind was was something creative drama and and then i went to university in london i went to goldsmiths and i studied drama there and again i felt like i didn't know where i was who i was because suddenly i was in this country where everybody thought i was you know for i mean i was from there you know they thought i was from england or from france and yet you know when i said i'm indian and my name is kalki and then they were like oh you don't look indian but you don't sound english but you don't you know and you don't where are you from and i yeah i still don't have an answer for that so um i lost my throat train of thought what were you okay you know continuing on that what was your first break you know when you when i finally auditioned for that yeah i i after after i finished uh my theater studies in london i went ahead i came back home and i started doing theater here and uh i i did a lot of sort of physical theater improv improvisational theater and uh i i didn't know where i was going but i knew that there was one thing that i was really hungry about and that's you know telling stories and becoming somebody else and in that you start to understand somebody else i think and that's what i loved about it about acting that you know acting is therapy it's like you go into somebody else's mind you discover things and then you feel a lot less distant from people because you who cares if they don't think the same way or they behave strangely or you know they might have so many different things which at first you you're so it's so easy to judge somebody just by looking at them and i think when when you start to take acting seriously you really sort of break that down and and you know see the humanity and the people behind that so that's what i loved and then yeah i i came back to india i did lots of theater and i went and did this audition for devde and the audition for devdy was funny because i uh i got a call and they said uh yeah there's an audition uh for this this and i i saw the script and it was in in hindi so i said i'm really sorry you have the wrong person my hindi is really bad i don't think i can do this so they gave me the script in english and i did it and 10 minutes after i left their office i got a call from anurag and around the director obviously you know him um and what they told me about the audition was that you know being it it's the role of a prostitute and everybody who came for the audition either did two things one they judged the script and said oh this is just dirty and it's like it's it's pornographic i mean how can you make a film like this or they would they would think that playing a prostitute like there was a sex phone sex scene so they would play it in a very overly sexual way like oh my god i'm i'm loving this side this is so wonderful and i'm you know and actually somebody who's doing that on a daily basis who's who's you know a prostitute is not going to be she's probably going to be doing other things you know this is like you know a call center call you know you know she's she's actually so she'll be like yeah yeah baby is wonderful it's lovely and she'll be like on her computer or doing other stuff you know and that that for me was that's what i i interpreted as and that's what got me the role so yeah yeah so how do you prepare for a role i mean i i think i'm i'm just so over excited when i get a role that i i do too much work i believe in doing too much work i believe in just going out researching and digging and annoying my director and calling them up every day and saying what what else can i do tell me tell me should i watch some movies read some books do this do that i do my research and everything and i have way too much information which i'll never be able to use and then i let it all go when i come on set you know i i feel you have to be ultra prepared and then wait for the surprise you know just let things surprise you let the other actor surprise you or let your director tell you no i don't want you to do it in this way i want you to do it that way so yeah so everybody knows you as an actress what tell me your other avatars as a writer poet what are the other things you do that are that you're equally excited about um i like sitting cross-legged uh i i like to write but no you know what i don't know if i like to write i'm a very reluctant writer i i have written all my life but i've noticed that i only write when i'm depressed or unemployed so i don't know if i really like to write it's a it's have you been writing anything lately i've i've been writing something yeah a few months back which one is it both both or bored maybe that that was the other one but um yeah i just wrote a play recently but uh yeah i don't know i think it comes out of a need to expose stuff and get stuff out on uh rather than you know i i it's a very personal thing my writing it's not really something that i do for somebody else um of course you know when you put a play up you put it up for an audience but when i write it i really just get it out of my system so do you have anything you want to read or tell us about your play any uh yeah i you you yeah you unfortunately told me to print out something yes i would like you to read your poem i couldn't see it in your hand you call it a poem because technically i think it's zero but it's like a rant you know it's just something that i wrote and uh yeah i'll just go for it we are the people of the world the collective the masses the capitalist communal fascists we are you we're ready for action for tragedy a trust atrocity hostility and fashion we are the impersonal we love great films but we don't live great lives we create drama but shy away from real life we are an army of sheep we fight for causes and stand up in the streets we fight for clauses throw stones and bombs and then build tombs with our feets we are an amorphous blob we are a greedy fat man standing in a queue unnoticed and nobody a slob we are nameless so that we can be shameless we are the mob the headless god we are blameless debates chat shows votes of the public and no opinion of our own online indulgence typing thoughts borrowed from a borrower selected educated and thoroughly plagiarized thoughts do's and outs typed copied copied pasted pasted past past and unprinted pages of a virtual web of denser than the dark ages thoughts that we copy thoughts we copyright thoughts we own and thoughts were not thinking alone everybody writes about it thinks about it talks about it but if somebody is actually doing it nobody gives a the we the fancy lives of the week we make news out of lipstick travel and choice of ice cream all frivolous news that comes out of our pockets and leaves as nations starving we the people we the classes we the businessman we the poor man we the ladies who pout with the fat off their asses our self-worth rests on the opinion of others on magazine covers on how many more overs on frequent lovers we the masses the people the system the supporters the obedient pairs of taxes we are to blame we should be ashamed we have neighbors we have money we have poverty we have each other we are the problem we are the solution we could know who we are we could go far if we just stop being so we so my last question to you you are the future young you know you're part of the ink fellows program as you look at the future as a young person what do what would you like to do and what do you wish happened i think it's too early for me to say what i wish to happen i i don't wish anything to happen i'm terrible at planning things and i don't want to predict anything i feel that everybody you know actually is is so afraid of facing themselves most of the time um you know we are always being people for somebody else and this is my me personally i'm talking about as well i've always been somebody for somebody you know like played somebody for other people and i think acting and and finding something that you're passionate about is is a way to really be truthful with yourself and be honest with yourself and uh i don't really have any you know sort of way of living or you know a philosophy of life except that you know there's a japanese saying that i like which says uh uh yesterday worse than today tomorrow better than today or something like that but basically you know there's another day coming and you you just need to keep going and you need to get better and uh i think that's it you know uh you know we're we're too busy judging other people or you know judging how we should be with other people uh rather than just concentrating on you know what's in front of us take a step move forward do something great thank you for being [Music] here

Channel: Growth Mindset

Views: 228,869

Keywords: Kalki Koechlin, kalki english speech, kalki inspiring speech, sa e speech, english speech, english speech for learning, english speech with big subtitles, speeches in english, new english speech 2021, motivational speech, motivational speech in english, speech in english motivation, english speech to improve english, english motivational speech, english speeches, english speech with subtitle, indian english speech, learn english, kalki speech

Id: FQ-z_M39iZ4

Length: 14min 1sec (841 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 28 2021