A life lived in fear is a life half lived.
If Paris is a city of lights, Sydney is the city of fireworks.
The ugly duckling is a misunderstood universal myth. It's not about turning into a blonde Barbie doll or becoming what you dream of being; it's about self-revelation, becoming who you are.
Sydney in general is eclectic. You can be on that brilliant blue ocean walk in the morning and then within 20 minutes you can be in a completely vast suburban sprawl or an Italian or Asian suburb, and it's that mix of people, it's that melting pot of people that give it its vital personality.
Sydney is rather like an arrogant lover. When it rains it can deny you its love and you can find it hard to relate to. It's not a place that's built to be rainy or cold. But when the sun comes out, it bats its eyelids, it's glamorous, beautiful, attractive, smart, and it's very hard to get away from its magnetic pull.
Ultimately, you have to pursue your own path, not someone's idea of the right path. You need to stay on your path.
The party is a true art form in Sydney and people practise it a great deal. You can really get quite lost in it.
One of my great all-time loves in cinema, and I've seen it three times, is Bondarchuk's 'War and Peace.' Not a lot of people may have seen that film. It was made during the Soviet era.
Historically, epics are set in Africa or Asia or the Wild West, but if you make an epic today it's hard to disassociate from the contemporary realities of those places.
I think dance in any culture, in any form, is a true leveler.
When you're in theater or the circus or film - to me it's all one - affairs happen. People fall in love.
I understand that anything actors are doing, good or bad, is motivated by fear.
Australia, to the rest of the world, is just far away, and Australia in the Thirties was the faraway of the faraway.
Some of the greatest relationship films of all time, the two stars have hated each other, but mostly you see that chemistry.
At a very young age I was allowed to go into the cinema and watch adult films.
I feel funny about owning art. I don't really want to say: 'Wow, come and see my Monet - it's in a dark room at the bottom of my cellar.'
In terms of the mechanics of story, myth is an intriguing one because we didn't make myth up; myth is an imprinture of the human condition.
I really believe musical form will go on. There's got to be a way of making musical form in cinema live again.
I've tried to make 'Strictly Ballroom' impossible to date. It does feel a bit '80s but I consciously made sure there was no technology in the movie that could date it.
I feel like a member of any group comprised of outsiders.
