“The cold-audition process is not a science, so I ignore that.”

The food in Sydney is an Asian Pacific cuisine. It’s eclectic but above all it’s fresh, inventive and creative and that’s what I love about it.

I feel funny about owning art. I don’t really want to say: “Wow, come and see my Monet – it’s in a dark room at the bottom of my cellar.”

Ultimately, you have to pursue your own path, not someone’s idea of the right path. You need to stay on your path.

Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth.

I think dance in any culture, in any form, is a true leveler.

I feel like a member of any group comprised of outsiders.

I understand that anything actors are doing, good or bad, is motivated by fear.

Australia, to the rest of the world, is just far away, and Australia in the Thirties was the faraway of the faraway.

Don’t worry about the future.

You really think that on my films people tell me what to do? I don’t think so. On my films I decide.

In the ’80s, everyone wanted to be in opera. It was groovy.

One of my great all-time loves in cinema, and I’ve seen it three times, is Bondarchuk’s ‘War and Peace.’ Not a lot of people may have seen that film. It was made during the Soviet era.

Accept certain inalienable truths.

Your choices are half chance, so are everybody else’s.

My father made sure that I had lots of levels of education – from ballroom-dancing to painting, commando training, theatre and magic.

I don’t have fights with actors. In absolute honesty, I’ve never fought with any actor ever.

Im really bad at tests of any kind, so Im bad at auditions. I consider myself educated most of the time, but when Im under the gun, I just fail.

If you ask any actor “What single thing would make you really, really happy?” Among the top five things they’d say is not having to audition anymore.

I had been playing with my local band, Skinny Cat. I had been to quite a few auditions before UFO, managed to get the gig and then not want to do it!

My audition song is, and has been since 1977, ‘I Love a Piano.

I missed a lot of school for auditions, but other than that I had a very normal childhood.