When I started in films, it never really occurred to me that I could make a career out of acting.

Try and fit in in a New Zealand playground with an Armagh accent - it doesn't work.

Wines are like women in that it's often the imperfections that fascinate.

I think it took us all by surprise. I mean, I knew that people in New Zealand would like [Hunt for the Wilderpeople], but no one really anticipated how much they would embrace it as it is. And it's playing widely in Australia now; they're running it as well. It's going to be interesting to see how it does it in the States, but I think if Sundance was any indication, I imagine it could do well.

I'm not big on Champagne, but I'd take along a bottle of Cristal to pop for when the boat comes to the rescue.

When I left university I was working for a documentary film company for six or seven years to the great relief of my father whose greatest waking fear was that I would become an actor.

The core of the film [Hunt for the Wilderpeople] is that relationship. Whether they're getting on or whether they're not. If that relationship works, then everything else works as well. And you kind of almost, sort of, gives into a realm of something like New Zealand magic realism... There is no world in which social work is actually pursues some kid into the woods in this manner.