National film industries tend to move in cycles. In Australia right now, we're on a high, a feeling of potential, which as yet shows no sign of flagging. But the word "industry" is misleading. A small national cinema has no industry in the Hollywood sense.

I carve stone. I've got hammers and chisels and I carve from sandstone. I just did a big mural of birds and trees.

I had always been wary of doing any autobiographical movies, truly feeling at home with fiction.

I loved Sherlock Holmes as a kid, but I remember being disappointed when he'd come up with these simple explanations for these complex mysteries.

It's spiritual, a man that has a past and regrets, but you can as a director take a shot, and there's something in the eyes and the face, you just can't fake it, you can't teach it, and I think Ed Harris has that quality.

It doesn't take any imagination at all to feel awed

The best conversation with Stanley Kubrick is a silent one: you sit in a theatre and watch his films and you learn so much.