I've always known that I've wanted to write, but I always saw myself doing that in the context of something other than film, so it was a really beautiful and kind of perfect moment in my life when I realized that I could combine this idea of wanting to write and tell my own stories with the environment I had grown up in and knew well - that I could make film as opposed to writing being a departure from what I knew.

I think what I've learned most from being an actress is that there's no method. That you have to invent this process over and over and over again, depending on who you're working with and what you're doing.

I am aware that I've generally been more attracted to introspective roles, but it's sort of bizarre, because it's the opposite of who I am in many ways. I think I'm quite an extroverted, loud person. So it interests me that that's sort of the place that I go all quiet, is when I'm onscreen. It's a bit strange.

I've always been such a fan of short films - in fact, I never considered that I would actually make a feature. I just thought I wanted to make shorts for the rest of my life. They are a lot harder to have shown and a lot harder to find and see as an audience, but I don't know. It's just a form that I really love. I was just making them for the process, but ultimately, I did get them into festivals, and they did end up on television, and they had as much of a life as short films can.

It's been really important to me to create moments where there's a breath or moments where there's a laugh or moments where there's real life that's allowed to seep in through the cracks of whatever melodrama is happening, because that's what does happen in life.

I still feel that a movie has to attempt to say something - even if it fails miserably. But I've sort of given up on believing that I'm going to change the world with every film I choose to act in.

I enjoy doing my more intimate and less commercial pictures and also I enjoy directing.