My dreams tend to be like dog dreams. I'm usually so tired that I hardly dream at all. In a way, I do think that the zone one performs in - without getting too ooga-booga about it - it's like that moment when you wake up in the morning and you're emerging from a dream state but you're not quite up. Where are you? Can you hear the birds? Or is that the traffic? It's that zone in which I perform. It’s like one foot in reality and one foot in a dream state. I spend most of my life in that state!

There's not a long, entrenched tradition of theatergoing in Australia.

Sometimes I think it's so good not to win those things. And, anyway, who wants to peak when they're 28?

We talked about trying to create an image that would somehow, to an audience, create the sense of awe, wonder and shock that the troops must have felt that their monarch - and a female monarch - went to the frontline of battle and was prepared to lay down her life. This speech is so well known and has been done in virtually every version of the events of Elizabeth's life.

Being on stage a lot is quite physical.

When you fall in love with someone, you're not really changing at all. You're really just reliving something that already happened at some point.

I think it's always good to take on things that at first seem bigger than you. Then you just try and surmount them.