“Fitzgerald coined the phrase the ‘Jazz Age,’ and now we’re living in the Hip-Hop Age.”

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.