PRIDE
Acting can be a tenuous career and you end up doing all sorts of other work. Does that wound the pride?
I think I came to terms early, early on with the fact that you have to do a whole lot of everything, really, to stay in the business. You might
make the mistake of thinking you're pretty special in some ways but you'll be brought back to earth regularly. There's plenty of really talented people out there and survival is the most important thing, ahead of everything else. So you stay pretty grounded - you get rejected, you miss out on things, you don't get the part, you struggle to pay the bills. It can be pretty bruising, anyone who is self-employed will relate to that. Your pride can take a battering for sure as an actor, but I also take a great degree of pride in my profession and the people I get to work with. I am very proud of what we do, in terms of the arts sector in New Zealand. I am very proud of my children and my family. My daughter Sophie is an actor in Westside and our son Joe currently works in the scaffolding business in Australia and I am equally proud of him. They are both fine young people.
Speaking of your daughter, what advice did you give her about pursuing an acting career?
I think as parents, Aileen and myself didn't ever push her into things. She showed a love for performing and a lot of natural talent, and we walked a fine line between supporting her and encouraging her and not putting any pressure on her. She grew up in a household where she learned how precarious her dad's work is. Sometimes we haven't got much money and we go without, and we don't have all the frills necessarily that her friends have. That was just reality for her from very early on, so she knows better than most what a difficult business it is to stay in. She is very resourceful, very talented, very hardworking and people love working with her. She is doing a miraculous job of staying in the business.
You famously played a dwarf in the Hobbit films. Did that ever get in the way of you getting other types of jobs?
It was a blessing from start to finish in so many ways, an inspiring and extraordinary experience. I got to work with some of the finest people you could ever hope to meet and some of the most celebrated people in the movie business, but there was a perception gap for a quite a while afterwards. People assumed we would never have to work again, which is definitely not the reality. For a while we were no longer on the radar. None of us would grizzle about the work conditions and the downstream money that comes in from time to time, which helps me stay afloat, but we're all hungry for work in every way we were prior to getting on the Hollywood train for a while.
GLUTTONY
Are you a savoury or a sweets guy?
I'm not averse to a lovely fat steak from time to time. I eat a lot of fish. Variety is the key, so you're not overconsuming any one particular kind of food. I know I've got the older man's tummy, which I need to work to get rid of. I enjoy a glass of wine possibly too often. My mother's a very good cook. I don't consider myself a good cook but I do enjoy cooking, so the pleasures of food and wine, I enjoy indulging in those. Of course you pay a price for overdoing it, so that's a lifelong lesson, isn't it, to do things in moderation. I haven't conquered that beast.
SLOTH
People tend to either see sloth in puritanical terms (you must make the most efficient use of your time) or to stress the importance of taking time to recharge. Which camp do you fall into?
Sometimes my wife says I work too hard when I get really obsessed with a project. At times, people work ridiculously hard in show business, because there is an opening date or a start for your project and everything converges, and often you are doing it with very little time and for very little money. I believe that all of us today are moving way too fast. We have extraordinary pressures on us, pressures to pay the bills, get your retirement sorted out, get your property, live life to the fullest. We also have media coming at us in the most outrageous way offering us this, that and the other thing -- this constant bombardment about how gorgeous our life could be -- and I think that's really stressful. We're overstimulated. We don't get enough time to walk on the beach and potter around and just be with the people we care about. I wish I could move more slowly. -Eleanor Black
