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Kamal Hassan Interview on CNN-News18 Interviewer: Mr. Hasan you're 63 today, but I remember an interview that you did when you turned 50. In which you said you need about 40 years more as a film maker. Mr. Hasan: Ya! But, I'll change my thing now and say I need 60 years more, but I don't have that time. Interviewer: You recently announced your political party, Makkal Needhi Maiam. You've been quoted having said that "You're giving up the movies", that you are bidding an adieu to the movies for politics. What change in the last 13 years? Mr. Hasan: Nothing has changed, but I think priorities have changed for the country, which has done so much for me and my art. I have not given back anything. And if it's not today, it will never be. So, it is late and I can only apologize now and say sorry and get on with the work that has to be done. It should have been earlier, probably the last interview that we had I should have spoken about that and then I would have been a 13 year old politician by now. Not that I am any younger as a politician, because my films were about politics. So, I was talking but now, I am walking the talk. Interviewer: You said that you joining the politics, that decision came from a cynicism, from an anger actually, from an anger from where we were as an Asian. Mr. Hasan: Skepticism, cynicism, anger, angst all turn to actual logical thinking and the only to go about it is to is to act upon it. Change is what you become. Interviewer: Do you have an agenda for what you want to do Mr. Hasan: Absolutely, absolutely! And, it is not a complicated agenda, not rocket science, though we call it the neo - polity, the culturist, as we want to call ourselves. But, that's all rhetoric, but what I think needs to be done is we have a robust constitution, and we must pursue that, we have already written it down and we're not practicing it. Freedom is in work in progress not a completed edifice. Interviewer: Right! Right! You know few people in the world started acting as early as you did. You started at three, you have been acting for 60 years. Do you worry whether you know life or a career outside of the movies? I had imagined that most people would have a crippling fear of stepping into the unknown. Mr. Hasan: No, but I have been always constantly stepping into the unknown. They never sort of went away from it. Sridevi for example, she was always a movie star. But, there was a time about ten years ago when I was a common man and I never left that situation and I am a reluctant actor. I never wanted to become an actor, so that part of it I've kept open to experiment purview and explore life. I'm very grateful to the digital era, and I able to watch the world which actors don't get to watch. Yousuf sahab lost touch with life, Chaplin lost touch with life and they were in this ivory tower. But, unfortunately the tower could be ivory but it's still visible, it's glass. Towers are now made of glass and its almost reachable, breakable, and the trolls of today will reach you wherever you are. Interviewer: You know Vishwaroopam 2, the new film is the sequel to Vishwaroopam, which of course came about five years ago in 2013. At that time it was banned by the Jailalitha led Tamil Nadu government. It only released in the state two weeks after its international release. What did that experience teach you? Mr. Hasan: That you should not give the handle to the tyrants. If you give that, if you don't challenge that position, because they rule tyranny because they are scared, they are not confident people. It’s not valour that makes them tyrannous, it is the fear of unknown, the fear of losing the seat that makes them tyrannous.