We live our lives by the water and if you don't know how to swim in Australia, it's like not knowing how to cross a road. It's an incredible survival thing that you really must learn when you're a child.

Stand-up came out of three things. Frustration, necessity and arrogance. I didn't have a great career ahead of me in anything. Someone literally said to me, 'You should try stand-up,' and took me to a venue.

I don't like working in a studio, at all. I just prefer to be on location, rather than hearing the bells of the studio going off. It's like being in Las Vegas, where no one knows the time and there are no windows.

I wasn't going to be a college kid. The only subject I was interested in was English. I think I had a subconscious interest in analyzing story.

I never look at the size of the film when I'm looking for a part.

Definitely the script because you want to be part of an interesting story, you want your character to be a challenge, then comes the director. But essentially it's the script first and whether it's a character that you think you can do.

But it's healthy - whatever you can do to keep you fresh and awake. Acting's such a ridiculous job and sometimes you need to look at it like that to get a sort of degree of freshness.