Rachel Griffiths

Rachel Griffiths: (About directing) I'm so creative in that environment. I'm so motivated to collaborate with people and help them realize the kind of collective vision. I love to work with the team and the problem solving - It's problem solving in a really vigorous way that acting. Acting is like playing, while directing is really fun, sort of like an orgy.

Rachel Griffiths: (About her second short film "Roundabout") It's about a man who has a nervous breakdown, which I call Anxiety Has Arrived, as if I wanted to put you in the seat of having an anxiety attack.

Rachel Griffiths: (About Alan Ball) Somehow this guy is someone that can go places that no other writer can take people, where they stay with him and go back for more. He explores their kind of darkest neuroses, and I think it's his discipline of being a sitcom writer that he just knows when to give us a scene or a line that takes the pressure valve and lets our steam out; he's so original.

Rachel Griffiths: I remember doing a pilot in the US and on the last day one of the crew asked me what I was going to do once we'd finished and I dropped my American accent and replied "I think I'm going to go back to Australia". The guy almost fell over!

Rachel Griffiths: When I accepted my Golden Globe for Six Feet Under I think I surprised a lot of people once they heard me speak. Plus I have a habit of staying in accent for my roles and then at the end of filming going back to my Australian accent.

Rachel Griffiths: I think a big part of our attraction to sport movies are the stories contained within the sports. There's nothing as exciting as a comeback - seeing someone with dreams, watching them fail, and then getting a second chance.

Rachel Griffiths: I'm not against doing all kinds of films and I don't have a political platform about working over a certain budget. As long as the role and the story are good, I'll do anything.

Rachel Griffiths: I think Australia shuns films that would push to find an audience anywhere. I think we often make less commercial films so why be surprised when they don't do commercial business? They're art-house films and that draws a certain audience.

Rachel Griffiths: All respects to the execution of "The Boys", but it's very disturbing. And "In the Winter Dark" was just an appalling script and I don't know how it ever got made.

Rachel Griffiths: I'm actually quite relieved I didn't do that blockbuster I was chasing because everybody hates it [Laughs].

Rachel Griffiths: Well, last year after the Oscar [nomination], there was one huge blockbuster I was chasing like mad because I thought it would be a lot of fun. After "Hilary and Jackie" and the nomination, I got mostly intense stuff and some bigger-budget things, but I chose to go home and do the play "A Doll's House". It was kind of the nail in the coffin in my working at that kind of emotional pitch; you know, the whole family of emotions you're only meant to go through once every couple of years in your life. I'd been putting myself through it in my job for eight months out of the year.

Rachel: (A factor of signing to do Brothers and Sisters- the stability of living in one place with a fixed schedule) A little bit. [You have to] kind of imagine how you're going to bring your little baby in and make sure his needs are met… to say, "OK, guys, I know there's a hundred people standing around, but I've got to just be with my baby now for about 20 minutes.

Rachel: When I read the script for "The Rookie" I'd just finished the first series of Six Feet Under, which I enjoyed enormously, but certainly had bigger emotions explored on a daily basis than a human being is meant to have in a six month period, so I wasn't looking for anything too demanding. Also, I was too tired to do a lead role and liked the idea of playing someone less complicated than my TV character.

Rachel: I'm mostly attracted to films that have a sense of purpose. Occasionally there's an exception because I'll just want to stretch myself in a new direction and the role facilitates that. I just don't think I could ever participate in a film — nor would I be attracted to a film — where the writer or director has a nihilistic view of the universe. I just don't think I could spend four months there.

Rachel: I'm sexy in a blue cheese kind of way — you either like it or you don't.

Rachel (on what she did before she started acting): I was a life model for classes of 70 year old pupils. Funny, right? It was perfect, though, because I was a terrible waitress. I just couldn't handle the stess of trying to keep track of all those food orders.

Rachel (on her role in "Brothers & Siters): Sarah's trying to juggle two kids and a working life. She's at a major company and comes back to the family firm thinking it'll be easier. But this time the stakes are really high because if the company fails, it's the family's future.

Rachel (on working with Calista Flockhart in "Brothers and Sisters"): Neither Calista or I have sisters and that was part of our mutual attraction. On Six Feet Under, I didn't have a sister and on Ally McBeal, she didn't either. It's something new to explore. Besides that, she's adorable.

Rachel: A trait of Australians is that we tend not to blow our own trumpets. I think there's something about being here in America where you're just more likely to say: "I'm really good at what I do and if I work hard it will happen." No-one laughs at you for saying it here.

Rachel: I work, I play and I get well paid. How lucky can you get?

Rachel (on returning to work after having a baby): I felt very lucky. It felt like the right time. I was also lucky on Six Feet, to be part of a show that was very family friendly. I had my kids there and we're going to do the same thing here (Brothers and Sisters).

Rachel: (Six Feet Under ending) No. It was a really great time for that show to end. It was great that [creator] Alan Ball was still a central figure right to the end, and that he was still engaged in it. Alan is the key voice of his generation- he speaks for this time the same way that Eugene O'Neill and Tennessee Williams spoke for theirs.

Rachel: (As a mother of two can you relate?) Yeah. In Sarah's marriage, we really want to look at the kinds of issues- the exhaustion, distraction, just getting through the day- that come when you have young kids, and just trying to find each other in that.

Rachel: (How she compares Sarah to her Six Feet Under character) Sarah feels much more powerful in the world. She's not debilitated by personal issues, but she's still very feeling and very sensitive. And very mothering.

Rachel Griffiths: I really miss Aussie theatre, so what I'm really hoping is that Brothers And Sisters buys me a bit of freedom back there to do that stuff.

Rachel Griffiths: I really do envy Toni (Collette) and Geoffrey (Rush), who manage to live their lives in Australia. They are very fortunate to go and make movies and then go back to Australia. It's really not been so easy for me to do that. I feel like I have to come here (LA) and hang around if I'm to get some work. In my ideal existence I'm in Australia with the option to come here to do one project a year and one back at home.

Rachel Griffiths: I've had a really great year, because I went back to work when Banjo was barely 6 weeks old, and that was a little traumatic, to be honest. As supportive as the Six Feet Under environment was, I was really quite unprepared for knowing how it would work.

Rachel: (HBO film Angel Rodriguez) It's a very real conflict in a woman of seeing people outside herself who need help, and feeling the limitations of her own life. She's pregnant and is going to be bringing life into the world, and reaching a point where she can't do more than she's doing to save this person. I've studied as a teacher, I've felt responsible for other people, but not with the same kind of intimacy.

Rachel Griffiths: Up until five seasons, we actually kind of remember the trip. After that, we forget where we've been.

Rachel Griffiths: I didn't become an actor so that my life and work could be separate things. I feel great about being able to come in and say, "I had this great idea. This thing happened with Banjo over the weekend." I've already dine that once. [Executive producer] Ken Olin said, "Oh, that's great."

Rachel Griffiths: (About her character in "Brothers & Sisters".) She's really beautiful, really warm, really competent. Harvard Business School, loving mother of two, just trying to juggle the whole thing with elegance and depth. She's been bought in to sort out what the hell has happened to this family company.

Rachel Griffiths: (About "Brothers & Sisters".) It is kind of Six Feet Under meets Dynasty.

Rachel Griffiths: Sometimes when I was little I used to know I was feeling what another person was feeling just by mimicking them.

Rachel Griffiths: If, as an actor, you are truthfully moved by the story you're telling, you can then offer that to an audience to identify with.

Rachel Griffiths: I love doing films where you can do really different things.

Rachel Griffiths: I couldn't happily live anywhere else outside of Australia.

Rachel Griffiths: A Golden Globe is a mood-altering substance, there's no doubt about that.

Rachel Griffiths: The closest thing I've got to baseball is playing rounders at school or my brothers using me as a cricket stump and throwing cricket balls at me!

Rachel Griffiths: I just don't think I could ever participate in a film - nor would I be attracted to a film - where the writer or director has a nihilistic view of the universe. I just don't think I could spend four months there.

Rachel Griffiths: Certainly in America I wasn't being offered romantic comedies or lighter roles because in everyone's imagination I was this very intense person.