Love Quote by Jacqueline McKenzie

There is a particular Australian humility baked into this: less talk about glory, more about the grind. McKenzie is pointing at an industry reality that rarely makes it into the glamorous version of filmmaking. When your films "don't get the exposure", the reward system shifts. You cant reliably bank on public recognition, so you invest meaning in the process itself: the craft, the routine, the shared problem-solving. Its a quiet admission that in smaller markets, prestige isnt the default payoff; solidarity is.

Her phrasing is telling. "The process is foremost" reads like a coping mechanism that has become a philosophy. If the spotlight is scarce, you learn to value the work for its own sake, but you also learn to protect yourself from disappointment. That "But anyway" is doing social work: it downplays the complaint, softens the critique, keeps the tone collegial. Actors are expected to be grateful, not resentful, even when the system is stacked against them.

Then she swerves into the part that sounds personal but is also political: "I love being part of the team and hate being stuck in a corner somewhere". On set, corners are where people get sidelined: by hierarchy, by boredom, by being treated like an accessory rather than a collaborator. McKenzie is asserting a preference for ensembles, for porous boundaries between departments, for a workplace where an actor is engaged rather than ornamented. Underneath it is a refusal of the celebrity model. She is not asking to be centered; she is asking not to be isolated. In an underexposed cinema culture, that is how you keep the work alive.