What I appreciated was the fact that the script delved into how Australians were - and still are - condescended to by the English.

People are intrigued and fascinated, almost obsessed with the private lives of great public personalities.

Someone told me that there's a connection to Superman, that in an early edition of the Green Lantern comics, Tomar Re was the envoy to Krypton. That was fascinating to me.

Yes, anally retentive men are my forte!

What I appreciated was the fact that the script delved into how Australians were - and still are - condescended to by the English.

Sometimes you do feel a script that glows in your hand the moment you start reading it. By page four of Shakespeare in Love, I said, 'I have to be in this movie.

I went to England in the '70s, and I was in my early 20s. There was still a residue of that era of being an underclass or colonial. I assume it must have been a more aggressive and prominent attitude 40 years before that, because Australia internationally wasn't regarded as having much cultural value. We were a country full of sheep and convicts.