After college, I funded my short films with acting roles in film and TV. I learned my craft through the great opportunities British television gave me as a director.
When I was little it was a great time for film-making, with stuff like Mike Nichols' 'Silkwood.' The films you see in that pre-secondary-school stage stay with you in a very particular way.
In starting to learn about film festivals and what were good ones - 'cause there are five billion of them - it was just a really good East Coast festival. And I thought this little movie was an East Coast film.
I'm hoping one day I can make one really good film.
I just think Australia tends to make very good movies, so if someone hands me an Australian or an American film script I would guess the Australian film would be more intriguing.
When you have Liam Neeson in a film, no matter how good everyone else is, it's a Liam Neeson film. And if there's wolves, and you're running, it's about Liam Neeson running from wolves.
Film has always been a really good tool for me to communicate emotion about why I create a collection. I'm probably one of the first designers to make short films.
I think you get out of film school what you put into it. If you don't care about making movies, film school will do you no good.
I am a cynical optimist. Big opening weekends are like cotton candy. The films you will remember over time are the films that stick in the consciousness of the audience in a good way.
'Alien' is a C film elevated to an A film, honestly, by it being well done and a great monster. If it hadn't had that great monster, even with a wonderful cast, it wouldn't have been as good, I don't think.
I turn up in Los Angeles every now and then, so I can get some big money films in order to finance my smaller money films.
It's very difficult to break into motion pictures, but it's oddly easier for directors today because of independent films and cable, who have inherited for the most part those films of substance that the studios are reluctant to finance.
The action films I will make in the future will be more believable and character-based. I am now on my second cycle of fame, and I want to make films that smell real and are truthful.
I love film, but it's funny going to drama school for three years, where you spend most of your time training for theatre, then coming out and just doing films.
My films are very rooted in specific people's point of view. Some film-makers give a more global point of view, like God looking down at the characters.
Sundance is going to be a defining moment in my life. But the unfortunate thing about Sundance is, when you have a film there, you can't have the opportunity to see other films.
There are characters in movies who I call 'film characters.' They don't exist in real life. They exist to play out a scenario. They can be in fantastic films, but they are not real characters; what happens to them is not lifelike.
Doing that, then doing a lot of theater, which I love. Doing guest stars, did two independent films that are going around to all these festivals. Both of them are going to be at the Lake Tahoe Film Festival.
One of the things about the '70s films I love - the films 'Nightcrawler' is being compared to, like, 'Taxi Driver' - is that they never put their flawed characters into any one box.
Strange - I'm not much of a film person. I love watching films, but they don't stay with me the way books do. Stranger still, because my husband is a screenwriter!
Every day I spend in Hollywood, I start to realize how many films are made with no heart and no love. They just do it for the paycheck, and I cannot imagine making a film that way.
