Jane Campion takes time out for her daughter and future

By PETER CALDER

Oscar-winning New Zealand film-maker Jane Campion has hinted that her movie career may be over.

In Auckland this week to publicise her new film, the Sydney-based writer and director said she was going to take a break of "at least four years" to devote herself to mothering and "rethink how I want to live the rest of my life".

"I have worked continuously for 15 years because the opportunity was there and I was really grateful for it, especially as a woman film director because there have been so few of us.

"I loved what I was doing and so I kept doing it.

"But I'm 50 this year and I've got a 9-year-old daughter, Alice, and I just want to be a mother for a while," Campion said.

She was not sure whether she would go back to film-making.

"I probably will but what I want to do is to create a space in which I don't know what's at the end of it, so when I get to the end of it I can say maybe I won't do that, I'll do something else."

Campion won an Oscar for her screenplay for The Piano in 1993. The film, which she directed, also earned Oscars for Holly Hunter and for NZ's Anna Paquin, who at 11 was the second-youngest Oscar winner of all time, after Tatum O'Neal (10).

The new film, In The Cut, an erotic thriller starring Meg Ryan, opened in cinemas this week.