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What I want to do is play roles as a black man, instead of playing black man's roles. You know?

The odd thing is if you asked me to do the accent now I would find it very difficult unless I was also playing that part, because I associate it so much with entering into the role and stepping into someone else's shoes.

Every time a director calls me and says, 'If you practice a lot in two months, can you be an American?' And I always tell them, 'Well, maybe but I'm French. So it's going to be hard to be someone else.'

But I don't think of myself as a foreigner or a Frenchman! I just think of myself as a director. Whether I'm French or Australian or whatever, it's really not important.

If I'm going to be honest with you, when I trained at school, I feel like I was training to be a chameleon. I want to be that versatile actor who can do anything - that's why you learn fifty different dialects, you do Shakespeare, you do commedia, you do it all so that if any job comes your way, you should be able to do it.

I never thought that I would have to play an Indian, well half French, but an Indian woman in my life.

So long as the Zulu people are here, clearly I will still have a role to play in this country.

I took a decision that I wanted to be a long-term player in Congo.

I want to play a princess or some woman from royalty or aristocracy. If I get to have an accent, even better. And I want to play a butt-kicking superhero, like Catwoman.