Quote

If I stayed in London, I probably would have gotten more work. I've never wanted to be thought of as an 'It' girl, someone who rides on the coattails of my mother.

I was studying English, as you will, in the day, and five nights a week, I would be at the cinema. That continued throughout my 20s, which was also the 1980s - there was a lot of really good films coming out then.

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.'

I tend to not think about the kind of movie things I want to be doing, because I've worked in all sorts of different places, and I've spent all sorts of time in England, and I'd still do things in Australia and in America.

To have a childhood surrounded by people like Sir Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh sounds glitzy, but for years I wanted to repress it. I couldn't take that kind of power and success.

I'd been an actor in high school, and when I got to college, it was all about film.

If 'New Girl' had been a movie, I don't know whether I would have been given the opportunity to do it.

How my film career happened, I don't know. It was unplanned. I'd been in films and TV throughout the Sixties and early Seventies, but it was really 'The Naked Civil Servant' in 1975 that put me on the radar.

When I was younger and in primary school, I'd do maybe a film a year, and I had to adapt to being away from everyone for a couple of months.

Britain has nurtured me and made me able to make movies that have travelled round the world.