New Delhi, March 9 -- "One of the things about acting is it allows you to live other people's lives without having to pay the price." - Robert De Niro

It is a simple sentence. But sit with it for a moment and it opens up into something bigger.

De Niro is saying that acting gives you a rare and somewhat unfair privilege - the ability to step fully into a life that is not your own, to feel its weight, its violence, its grief, its joy - and then walk away from it. A hitman. A boxer. A broken Vietnam veteran. A mob boss. You live inside those skins just long enough to understand them, and then you go home for dinner.

Most people, if they wanted to understand what it feels like to descend into addiction, or to carry out an act of violence, ...