soFem So tell us about your character, Kate. She has a lot of rules but little by little she changes...
CJZ Well, she has lots of rules and she has a very blinkered look at life. She's a control freak in the kitchen, she's a perfectionist and she runs a tight ship. Her kitchen and her food are her world. She has nothing else in her life, which is pretty sad and she's quite cut off from everything else and doesn't let people into her environment. Until, through tragedy, her niece arrives on her doorstep and she inherits her. And my character just doesn't know what to do with this child, let alone try and be a surrogate mother!
soFem As a mother yourself?
CZJ As a mother myself it was hard for me in the beginning of the movie not for my maternal instincts come out with Abigail, our little actress - who is terrific in the movie - because instinctually I'm so completely different to Kate, so at the back of my mind all the way through the beginning of the movie was "just imagine that this child is an alien that's walked into my life and I don't know what to do: what to feed her, how to console her." And through love and healing this woman's life changes dramatically and she lets people in; and through letting people in she falls in love and she's allowed to love and she learns what love is all about.