Quotes from Essie Davis

Parenting is meant to be just a natural part of life. You just think you know how to do it but, of course, it's much more complicated than that.

As soon as you become a parent, everyone gives you their parenting advice. It's like an onslaught of information about how other people do it.

Being a mother impacts every aspect of your life. It's a rite of passage which gives you an entirely different outlook on things.

Awards and nominations really help sell films.

I've sung before, first in a band in high school and then in a band in Norway, but never in a musical.

I wanted to be an actor, but only because I wanted to be everything, and that was the only way I could be a marine biologist as well.

I love Australia and loved growing up here, and that's something I don't want to deny our children, but it's difficult sustaining a career in Australia.

Film directors don't come to the theatre in Sydney. In London and New York, they do.

I always knew I wanted to go to NIDA. I think I was very fortunate, and I do doubt myself often, but I didn't see any possibility of me not going to NIDA. I believed in myself, and I believed that, if you really do want something, you get it.

'The Custodian' was my first film, and there were so many lessons to learn in that week. It was really fun, but for me, I look at it as a training film, and I'm not really proud of my work in it.

'The Slap' is not like anything else. It's an incredibly well-written novel that has been turned into a great and intriguing series that reveals both less and more about each character than you learn in the book. It's a novel that has been given a second chance to live.

There are many books that I love dearly, and I've seen many televised or film recreations that I just haven't thought were up to scratch.

I have children, and they demand my full and complete attention. They get that when I'm at home, even during the night, but it is really hard, and I do wonder how a lot of women do it without bawling their eyes out every day.

I do like having a private life.

I learn the techniques and then take what I need. I have the Essie Davis technique of acting. I'm an instinctive actress.

I was terrified of being a mum because I didn't think I'd ever be grown up enough.

I've really had a great career. It's been part fortune and part my own choices that steered my own career into playing the great roles that I've played on stage in Australia and at the National and West End in London and on Broadway.

There are some jobs that you go for because achieving them would take your career in a direction that you would like it to go, but mostly, I want to play the roles and have had the great good fortune and opportunities to play some fantastic roles and been very, very fortunate.

Sometimes it's easy to do brave things in front of a thousand people, but it's hard to do them in front of a handful. It feels so much more exposing.

I'm a fan of mindfulness, and if colouring in is a way of reaching mindfulness, then I think it's great. But I'm amazed that anyone has the time to do that. I certainly don't.

I think my morals are perfectly... tight!

It's hard, but what's the point of having children unless you're there to raise them, I reckon.

Even though I love fashion and the red carpet dresses are a great, fun, glorious thing, I don't really have my finger on the pulse, as Phryne Fisher does, of the fashion industry.

Phryne Fisher could walk down the red carpet; Essie Davis is something else.