I think at the prospect of bringing children into the world, your mortality comes very much to the forefront, absolutely.

You have to know how to evolve with age without trying to hang on to your younger image of yourself from the past.

Every director works differently.

The Oscar is very beautiful, utterly mesmeric, but I don't feel any more important because I have won one. It doesn't mean I'm any better than anyone.

Some ideas, like what you're going to do with your life, take time to form.

It's not the normal way to look at things but I experienced death at a really young age and because of that it's been part of my mental landscape that death is really very possible.

I've got a funny old face. Someone described it once, and I think they were being kind, as character. But I know what they mean! I've never been that conventional. I suppose maybe it means that my face can look different in different lights, so I just try and sort of keep it simple when I'm going out, to still look like me.

People talk about the golden age of Hollywood because of how women were lit then. You could be Joan Crawford and Bette Davis and work well into your 50s, because you were lit and made into a goddess. Now, with everything being sort of gritty, women have this sense of their use-by date.

I think you're peripatetic when you work in this industry. My husband and I are assuming the role of co-artistic directors at the Sydney Theatre Company in 2008. But as long as the film industry will have me, I will have it.

It's part of my job. You can't play Veronica Guerin sounding like this. It just wouldn't wash. But what I find fascinating about doing an accent -- unless it's a farce -- is that it's not slapped on.

It seems like people increasingly just can't be by themselves because they're so used to having an epicenter on the Internet that actually exists for other people. Until someone clicks onto your Facebook page, it doesn't mean anything.

After two kids, I hit the pillow and go straight to sleep.

My husband keeps me really honest.

Things present themselves to you, and it's how you choose to deal with them that reveals who you are. We all say a lot of things, don't we, about who we are and how we think. But in the end it's your actions, how you respond to circumstance that reveals your character.

Don't you find that work, if you love it, is actually really invigorating?

Who would want a face that hasn't seen or lived properly, hasn't got any wrinkles that come with age, experience and laughter? Not me, anyway.

When you're directing something, you absolutely have to be involved in all layers of the process.

Australia is a remarkable country with incredible technical and physical resources and a capacity to be a world leader in renewables.

When a gift is difficult to give away, it becomes even more rare and precious, somehow gathering a part of the giver to the gift itself.

There are certain things in ancient practices that are not worth adhering to.