SAM NEILL

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

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

No intelligent man wears a moustache voluntarily - you can write that down.

'Dexter' I'm very fond of. I got addicted to that.

When I started in films, it never really occurred to me that I could make a career out of acting.

Every actor wants more offers, but I get enough and I do like to be busy.

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

I'm not big on Champagne, but I'd take along a bottle of Cristal to pop for when the boat comes to the rescue.

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 can never really remember what I look like. I'm just sort of neutral. I don't think I'm sort of, you know, hideous.

People turn into fools when they see a movie star and do weird things.

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 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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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 have a chateau in France. There's no private airplane or yacht.

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

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

If you're making films in New Zealand, you can't avoid the landscape. It's certainly more handsome than I am.

I'm conscious that there's only a limited amount that I'll get done before I get shuffled into retirement, but I certainly have no desire to retire.