After Bottle Rocket, I started getting acting work. People started offering me roles in movies. It wasn't something that I thought about as a kid growing up in Texas. Actually, maybe I would have thought of it as a possibility, but it seemed so crazily far-fetched to think that you could work in movies that I really didn't ever quite imagine it. It was just lucky.

What's funny is that there's a lot of great Australian actors in American movies but you don't often hear them do their Australian, original accent.

Australian cattle dogs, are not like Labradors, where they just like to just sit around by the fire and get petted. They're working dogs, so they have a lot of energy, and they can drive you crazy.

There's something people find hilarious about dogs surfing and dancing and talking in the movies. I think it's nice for people - I think it's wish fulfillment - to see animals talking.

The first thing I remember is Alexander Calder - our school took us on a field trip to go see the Calder mobiles, and that always stuck in my memory.

It's not enough just to be real; you have to try to make it interesting or entertaining.

James L.Brooks is just a very original person. So that was definitely the luckiest, most important thing that happened to me [meeting him]. Then I guess also meeting Ben Stiller. He cast me in the only thing I think I ever auditioned for and got: Cable Guy [1996]. And that led to us becoming friends.