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I love coming home to Melbourne. The first thing I do is have a coffee. It's just so much better here than anywhere else. It's better than in Italy and I travel a lot. I crave it.

I moved from New Zealand to Melbourne when I was 17. I'd planned to go to university to study French, but I was offered a contract to write and record an album that was too good to pass up. Looking back now I think that was pretty young but, at the time, I was ready to have an adventure.

I guess I've been fortunate in having an ongoing film career while being based in Melbourne. I'm happy to commute. A day on a plane. Come on. It's easy.

I've always been in love with Melbourne. When I was 12, I was taken into the city by my grandmother to go to the ballet for the first time.

When I left school I went to Australia for a year and worked in the drama department of a school in Perth.

I went to University of Victoria on Vancouver Island and their theater program.

I've had people ask me to come and work for them. I went to Vienna and did three scenes in a movie for a guy that I met at a retrospective of Cassavetes films. It's a great way to travel, to meet people, to see different countries and cultures.

Professionally, I was at Bristol Old Vic Theatre School and did lots of things there, and then I won the BBC Carlton Hobbs Award, so I did some BBC Radio drama work, which is a lovely way to start out because you work with lots of great people, and you're working all the time, so you're learning rather than sitting around and waitressing.

After studying in Sheffield, I went down to London to do my post-graduate degree at the National Film and Television School, embarking on the movie that would eventually become 'A Grand Day Out.'

It's always nice to come home and work in Australia with friends I've known since I started.