Coming from a very small country, it's always nice to see our own doing well.

I had a country upbringing in a predominantly Maori community, and that contrasted with a very multi-cultured arts community in the Aro Valley in Wellington: growing up around a lot of theatre and poets and writers and stuff.

Anyone who has a parent can relate to this idea of not quite understanding who your parents are or making up stories about them.

With some actors, you can tell, just from their different backgrounds and their different approaches to working, they would have just a natural conflict, just a sort of friction.

My family is everything. I am what I am thanks to my mother, my father, my brother, my sister... because they have given me everything. The education I have is thanks to them.

I was adopted by two amazing people: a Salvadoran mother and a white father who were incredibly supportive of me and my work. I am eternally grateful for them.

I live by family over everything.

My forebears were fantastically wealthy Armenians who came to England from India in the 19th century and did what foreign types do - they married into a penniless but well-bred local family.