Very, very rare that you do a job knowing that the audience is desperate for you to do that job. Most films you make don't get released, is the fact.
You don't do an experimental film to become rich, so the people who are involved are involved because they enjoy the creative aspect of it.
My first student film was Orientation, which was basically the set-up for Animal House. There are a couple of scenes that we later borrowed in some form.
Then my first film was something called Cannibal Girls, which sounds like a horror movie but was actually kind of a goofy comedy with horror elements. Like a horror spoof.
There are lots of wonderful actors doing animated films these days, but I prefer it when you can't recognise them - it means they've really become the character.
I don't think I'd ever start making a film until I had both the intimacy with the subject and the distance to make it live in a certain way.
I conveniently was not accepted to film school, which I applied to in 1987, and so I decided I would become a filmmaker instead of a student.
I really believe the form of the film must be in the scenario; cinema is not just added value to the scripting. I believe in it as a totality.
It's a tough transition really for theater actors to adjust to television or film, and all of these years later, I still have a tendency to play it too big.
Any film I see at two o'clock in afternoon with my mother seems to cast a strange spell that means we both come out sobbing.
Generally speaking I would say I enjoy the smaller films more because there's a less sense of pressure and often the material is more unusual.
I've produced a couple of films and really enjoyed starting it from the very beginning and seeing it all the way through to the end; that was very gratifying.
The entertainment medium of film is particularly tuned to the present imaginations of people at large. A lot of fiction is intensely nostalgic.
E. Klimov's 'Come and See,' about partisans fighting the Germans in Byelorussia, is the greatest anti-war film ever made.
I want to do films that challenge me. I want to do what the actors I look up to are doing - the Gary Oldmans and Daniel Day-Lewises.
I never really worked in Hollywood. Some American producers came to Europe to shoot films with me, so it's a different situation... It was not my aim.
When you're working with people you've seen in hundreds of films... it's a bit crazy to step outside yourself for a minute and think, 'This is surreal.' But I try not to get too bogged down in that.
I've had a lot of different responses to my films. I got a lot of support from 'The Piano,' the obvious one, but it feels like an ocean, with a lot going on - the goal is to keep alive.
I won't make shorthand films, because I don't want to manipulate audiences into assuming quick, manufactured truths.
Compared to the United States and certainly a lot of other countries around the world... per year, Australians do see more films.
My taste in the films I've taken as an actor is similar to what I'd do a director or writer: all quite odd, challenging stuff, slightly off-the-wall.
