I get very antsy and nervous if I don't know what the next job is.

You never really know who you're going to be acting with, but that doesn't really matter. 99% of the actors I've worked with, and they number in the thousands, I've liked.

I hate to say it, but there seems to have been some sort of dumbing down as far as movies go.

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.

I enjoy some physical stuff. But if I had a choice between playing a scene where it's raining, it's terribly cold, I'm wet and I'm being drowned and playing a scene with dinosaur eggs in a laboratory, I'd probably take the latter. It's warmer and generally more comfortable!

I understand acting and I understand actors. I don't really understand the world of celebrity. That's just bizarre. Those sorts of elements I'm at sea with.

This was only Taika Watiti fourth film [Hunt for the Wilderpeople], but I think he brings a very original way of looking at stuff and I think if you look at Boy, for instance, which is a beautiful film, that was his second feature, and it's heartbreakingly sad, but it's also simultaneously very funny. There are not many people who can do that.