One of the best things about growing up in New Zealand is that if you are prepared to work hard and have faith in yourself, truly anything is possible.

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.

I think everything that you do, you're learning. I mean, every movie that you make is like a film school; that's one of the things that I enjoy about filmmaking.

Learning how to edit movies was a real breakthrough.

It was an interesting question as to whether the BBC had a future in the digital world, and what form of market failure could justify the licence fee system.

To be clear, people are the most important part of any classroom. If given the choice between a great teacher and the world's most advanced education technology, I'd pick the teacher any day for my own children.

I am not a big technology person. I don't go on the Internet really much at all. Drawing is like a zen thing; it's private, which in this day and age is harder to come by.

Big Internet companies on average are capable of generating revenue of $1 million per employee, and that compares to 10 to 20 percent of that which is normally generated by traditional offline businesses of comparable size.