Sam Neill

“I don't have a chateau in France. There's no private airplane or yacht.”

“I feel very privileged working with other actors. Actors tend to be the best company I know.”

“I think so much of your energy when you're growing up is about becoming independent of your parents. And the older you get, the more you realise you're actually so much part and parcel of the same kind of material.”

“If you want to learn about America, watch 'The Wire.' It's a profound piece of entertainment.”

“If you're making a horror film, it's very important that you have lots of quiet, suspensey, don't-know-what's-happening stuff before you get the big fright.”

“I don't think I ever felt an outsider when I had a stutter.”

“I go by the role pretty much. And I think the only genre I haven't gotten to do but I'd love to is a western, but no one has ever asked me to do that. Unfortunately they are very few and far between these days, but that is one type of film I'd love to do.”

“I certainly don't want to die playing a round of golf. And I don't want to die like Elvis. That's all they remember about him - the most beautiful man on the planet.”

“As much as possible, I try to encourage people to use stunt men because that is really their job.”

“I think you need brains to do any Shakespeare with any authority. I could do Shakespeare, but not with any authority.”

“We always have to remind ourselves of how fragile life on this planet is and what responsibilities we have.”

“I was - I was very - I wasn't outgoing at all as a child.”

“I've worked all my life to shed myself of any character.”

“I can tell you where I was when Kennedy was shot - which was in the common room at school. I heard about it on the old valve radio. At the time of Armstrong's landing, I was at university rehearsing a play.”

“I'm serviceable. I'm durable. I get the job done.”

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

“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.”

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

“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!”

“If it looks like fun, and it looks like quality, then I'll do it. I don't feel compelled to work - or not to work.”