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.
— Essie Davis
I'm just a very fortunate actor who has not been typecast.
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 learn the techniques and then take what I need. I have the Essie Davis technique of acting. I'm an instinctive actress.
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.
I have learnt a lot about theatre, and I would like to know the same about film.
Goals are essentially private things.
'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.
It's such a magnificent thing to be able to love someone and expect nothing from them.
Being a mother impacts every aspect of your life. It's a rite of passage which gives you an entirely different outlook on things.
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.
I personally don't resent having my children.
I don't know if I want to walk down the street and have everyone staring. I think that would be awful. I'm a pretty shy person, really.
I never said I wanted to be a movie star.
Everyone has a point of view about corporal punishment.
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 think every character rubs off on you a little bit.
I often get mistaken for all different kinds of ages; some of them flattering, some of them not.
Even if the Tonys aren't as glitzy as the Oscars, being a part of the ceremony is no less exciting.
Film directors don't come to the theatre in Sydney. In London and New York, they do.
I've sung before, first in a band in high school and then in a band in Norway, but never in a musical.
There's something great about being on location with a bunch of people - there's a camaraderie and intimacy that builds up over time.
I want to carry a really great role in a great film.
I think my morals are perfectly... tight!
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.
I grew up with a love of words.
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.
Phryne Fisher could walk down the red carpet; Essie Davis is something else.
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.
I'm incredibly ambitious, but I feel I've got a fantastic career, and I love the anonymity. I love that no one knows who I am.
I miss my friends in London, and I really miss New York. But I also miss the stability of staying in one place and being able to just open a drawer if you've run out of sticky tape and chuck a new roll in the holder.
I used to buy things for every hotel room or every place I lived in to make it feel like home.
I honestly do think that every character - you pick up the things, little things that you like about them in your life. Especially if you play a character for a long time.
I was terrified of being a mum because I didn't think I'd ever be grown up enough.
I think it's an actor's gift to be as old as people think you are.
I think you've got to understand your character and where they're coming from.
I think the unemployment rate for actors is pretty much the same in Sydney, London and New York. In all three cities, there are more actors than there are jobs. But I do think that there are far more acting opportunities in London and New York than in Sydney, where there are approximately seven actors that you see over and over again in every play.
It's nice being married to somebody who thinks you've got something better in you.
Awards and nominations really help sell films.
People who don't know how old I am can cast me as the woman in 'Girl with a Pearl Earring' and can cast me as Stella in 'Streetcar Named Desire,' and they are miles apart.
I do like having a private life.
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.
The news is so instantly available to us without delay, interpretation, or a filter. What is hot right now is streamed live without context or perspective.
'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.
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.
Most mothers think they are bad mothers. We all make terrible mistakes, often, and always think we're getting it wrong.
I want to have the great roles that move people profoundly. I want to have the choice and be given the opportunity to play those roles, and unfortunately, fame plays a huge part in that.
I would love to get a job in France!
One of the things I have loved so much about the career that I have had is that pretty much every character I have played is diametrically opposite to the one before it.
I've had really a great choice of roles that have been very different from one another. And I think I kind of set out to do that when I began my career - to aim to never play the same thing twice.
