There's four biggies. There was Elizabeth I, George III, Victoria, and the current queen, who really dominated four eras.

I would always slip away to the cinema. I always found something absolutely extraordinary about the fact that these actors were always kind of kicking hard at some new dimension they were doing on film.

I often thought I was in the wrong business. I was pretty seriously thinking of tossing it in before I shot Shine. I do not know why. I was pretty restless, I had been through a bad period of stress induced anxiety - panic attacks - and I was not sure of what I wanted to do.

Nobody ever said that growing old would be easy. Just having to hold the newspaper out in your forties and then hair growing out of unusual parts of your body in your fifties. It's tough on the ego.

Yes, anally retentive men are my forte!

My kids started school, so having a strong base in Melbourne has been a key priority. I'm not daunted by the travel. People say, 'It's so far to Australia,' and I say, 'You get on the plane, you eat well, you sleep, you wake up - and you're there.'

When you are playing an egomaniac running a fantastical ship, you don't want him to be too suburban. Naturalism doesn't work on the high seas.