Sam Neill quotes:

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'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 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.

Nobody knows who Barry Crump is, anywhere, but in New Zealand he's huge. I am of that age, where I sort of grew up with Barry Crump books. Look, if you read the book, you realize it is actually not a funny book at all.

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

[Hunt for the Wilderpeople] people seem to be just finding it hilarious in Sundance. I would think that judging on the feedback I get; it's a very warming film. It's not sentimental, but people are sort of heart warmed by a message that's pretty rare.

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.

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

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

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

Actors are easy to like. They are generally sociable, thoughtful people.

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

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

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

Failure is never quite so frightening as regret.

I like being around actors. Imagine not liking actors.

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

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

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

Magic realism - somebody used that phrase the other day that is familiar with South American literature. That rang a bell. It resonates with me.

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

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.

Because I was familiar with Taika's Watiti work and there's a very subversive, funny streak amongst all of them. I don't think he turned [Hunt for the Wilderpeople] into a sort of drama, there's too much dark material underneath it for it to be a comedy; it wasn't designed to be a comedy. I think it's a comedy... I think it's a drama that's funny; which is different.

Big budgets don't necessarily give you big films.

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.

I like actors. I like their insecurities, their humor and their intelligence.

I never met Barry Crump, but I was in an audience once for a play once. There was a drunken man at the back of the auditorium that was shouting during a performance of a one man play, and it turned out later on that was Barry Crump and he was in a state of inebriation.

I think it took us all by surprise. I mean, I knew that people in New Zealand would like [Hunt for the Wilderpeople], but no one really anticipated how much they would embrace it as it is. And it's playing widely in Australia now; they're running it as well. It's going to be interesting to see how it does it in the States, but I think if Sundance was any indication, I imagine it could do well.

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.

In the case of Wilderpeople, I walked on the first day with some apprehension actually; because it doesn't come anywhere close to anything I've really played before, this part.

The core of the film [Hunt for the Wilderpeople] is that relationship. Whether they're getting on or whether they're not. If that relationship works, then everything else works as well. And you kind of almost, sort of, gives into a realm of something like New Zealand magic realism... There is no world in which social work is actually pursues some kid into the woods in this manner.

This was only Taika Watiti fourth film [Hunt for the Wilderpeople], but I think he brings a very original way of looking at stuff and I think if you look at Boy, for instance, which is a beautiful film, that was his second feature, and it's heartbreakingly sad, but it's also simultaneously very funny. There are not many people who can do that.

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

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

Where we're going, we won't need eyes to see.

Wines are like women in that it's often the imperfections that fascinate.

You don't necessarily have to go a long way in New Zealand to be in some pretty dense and scary bush.

You never really know who you're going to be acting with, but that doesn't really matter. 99% of the actors I've worked with, and they number in the thousands, I've liked.