If you start with a good idea, you can encapsulate it in a phrase and explain it. I like high-concept films. Everyone can get hold of it. I don’t think there’s any harm in that at all. Jane Campion Read Quote
This is the first generation to grow up on Thatcher – it’s a different ethos. It’s money minded, and it’s the cult of yourself. Now that’s fine, except when it falls down, and you can’t achieve your goals – through high unemployment, through the fact that you probably need inherited money to get anywhere. Jane Campion Read Quote
I seem to have been able to make a career out of doing what I feel like doing, so why not keep doing it? What’s corrupting is wanting to be more important. You want to be more arty – you get your identity from that. Or you get your identity out of making more money. Jane Campion Read Quote
The Piano Lesson’ is very sophisticated, easily the most adult or complex material I’ve attempted. It’s the first film I’ve written that has a proper story, and it was a big struggle for me to write. It meant I had to admit the power of narrative. Jane Campion Read Quote
For me, being a director is about watching, not about telling people what to do. Or maybe it’s like being a mirror; if they didn’t have me to look at, they wouldn’t be able to put the make-up on. Jane Campion Read Quote
Performers are so vulnerable. They’re frightened of humiliation, sure their work will be crap. I try to make an environment where it’s warm, where it’s OK to fail – a kind of home, I suppose. Jane Campion Read Quote
I took four years off after ‘In the Cut’ because I wanted to see who I’d be without work. I even tried being a hermit in the wilderness in New Zealand. I stayed in a warden’s hut two-and-a-half hours off the Routeburn Track through the fjords on the South Island. It was early winter, so there was no electricity or running water. Jane Campion Read Quote
I’m someone who loves to play. I make films so I can have fun with the characters. Jane Campion Read Quote
Eight years ago, I was drawn into Keats’s world by Andrew Motion’s biography. Soon I was reading back and forth between Keats’s letters and his poems. The letters were fresh, intimate and irreverent, as though he were present and speaking. The Keats spell went very deep for me. Jane Campion Read Quote
