Actors will never be replaced. The thought that somehow a computer version of a character is going to be something people prefer to look at is a ludicrous idea.

'Heavenly Creatures' was really the idea of Fran Walsh. It was a very famous New Zealand murder case, but not one that people knew much about.

I just got tired of being overweight and unfit, so I changed my diet from hamburgers to yogurt and muesli, and it seems to work.

We're human beings, and we want stories. We're always going to be entertained and have our emotions touched by humanity and by things that we recognize in our own lives. So whilst every now and again we'll be happy to watch a bubblegum film, it's never gonna be the only things that get made.

Once you go down a road, you take it through to the end.

Once upon a time, sound was new technology.

Once the film is out and a lot of people are seeing it, it becomes almost owned by the cinemagoers of the world.

There are perennial stories like 'Alice in Wonderland' and 'Sherlock Holmes' and those sorts of things, which have been around since almost as long as film, and 'Frankenstein' is another one. They're perennial favorites, which get remade every 20 years, and that's OK.

Stem cell therapy has the potential to treat a multitude of diseases and illnesses, which up until now have been labelled 'incurable.'

When I was about 14, I got a splicing kit, which means you could chop up the film into little pieces and switch the order around and glue it together.

My dad always told me that the principal reason he chose New Zealand to emigrate to after World War II was the high regard his father had for the Kiwis he encountered at Gallipoli.

When you're starting out, you know, you have to do something on a very limited budget. You're not going to be able to have great actors, and you're most likely not going to have a great script.

To be an original is probably the hardest quality to find if you're a young filmmaker.

'The Return Of The King' has a conclusion.

I don't really want to make a stylized film or anything too surreal.

Being honoured with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame alongside the names of some of my childhood heroes is slightly surreal and incredibly awesome.

I like to keep an open mind, but I do think there is some form of energy that exists separate to our flesh and blood. I do think that there's some kind of an energy that leaves the body when it dies, but I certainly don't have religious beliefs particularly.

Strategically, horror films are a good way to start your career. You can get a lot of impact with very little.

Critics in particular treat CGI as a virus that's infecting film.

To get an Oscar would be an incredible moment in my career, there is no doubt about that. But the 'Lord of the Rings' films are not made for Oscars, they are made for the audience.

I didn't want my kids having to pass through an airport named after their father.

I mean, I didn't have a huge upbringing with movies, I guess.

The vast majority of the CGI budget is labor.

The only thing about 3-D is the dullness of the image.

I was bullied and regarded as little bit of an oddball myself.

I used to send away for eight-minute Super 8 movies of various Ray Harryhausen scenes advertised on the back of 'Famous Monsters of Filmland' magazine.

There was a great magazine in the '80s called 'Cinemagic' for home moviemakers who liked to do monster and special effects movies. It was like a magazine written just for me.

48 frames per second is something you have to get used to. I've got absolute belief and faith in 48 frames... it's something that could have ramifications for the entire industry. 'The Hobbit' really is the test of that.

I thought that there might be something unsatisfying about directing two Tolkien movies after 'Lord of the Rings.' I'd be trying to compete with myself and deliberately doing things differently.

Buster Keaton's 'The General,' from 1927, I think is still one of the great films of all time.

I watch 'Goodfellas,' and suddenly it frees me up entirely; it reminds me of what great film directing is all about.

People sort of accuse Tolkien of not being good with female characters, and I think that Eowyn actually proves that to be wrong to some degree. Eowyn is actually a strong female character, and she's a surprisingly modern character, considering who Tolkien actually was sort of a stuffy English professor in the 1930s and '40s.

In the old days, you cut out a scene that might've been a really great scene, and no one was ever going to see it ever again. Now, with DVD, you can obviously... there's a lot of possibilities for scenes that are good scenes.

I am not anti-media at all. But the media, the news anywhere in the world, is based on drama.

It is now such a complex society in terms of media. It just comes at us from every direction. You kind of have to push it all away.

Second movies are great because you can drop into them, and it doesn't really have a beginning on it, particularly in a traditional way. You can just tear into it.

Filmmakers have to commit to making 3-D films properly like Jim Cameron did and not do cheap conversions at the tail end of the process.

You don't want to believe everything you read on the Internet.

Learning how to edit movies was a real breakthrough.

Obviously, movies, you're often on location, out in the rain or the sun, in a real place where the trees and the cars are real. But when you're on stage, as an actor you're imagining the environment that you're in.

If you take a regular animated film, that's being done by animators on computers, so the filmmaking is a fairly technical process.

To direct a genuinely animated film, you're really having meetings and discussing what you want with animators who then go off and produce one shot at a time that you look at and comment on.

I never overtly analyse my own movies, I don't think that's my job to do that. I just muddle through and do what I think is best for the movie.

If you make a trilogy, the whole point is to get to that third chapter, and the third chapter is what justifies what's come before.

I love Bilbo Baggins. I relate really well to Bilbo!

I never wanted to do 'The Hobbit' in the first place.

We had to get past the mechanical film age to be able to explore other things, but it will be interesting.

Too often, you see film makers from other countries who have made interesting, original films, and then they come here and get homogenized into being hack Hollywood directors. I don't want to fall into that.

I have a freedom that's incredibly valuable. Obviously my freedom is far smaller in scale than people like Zemeckis and Spielberg have here. But it's comparable. I can dream up a project, develop it, make it, control it, release it.

I always have had a slightly jaundiced view about people who promote books about themselves.