The film is a romance with songs and dances, aimed at a family audience.
When I imagine my viewer - and it sounds saccharine - but it's a family thing. People in line for my books came as families.
I know my audience, and they, in turn, know my cinema. When I pick a subject, it's for a family audience. I shoot and edit my films keeping them in mind. I'm dead sure about the product that bears my name.
When I write, I keep the family audience in mind. I ensure there's no vulgarity, as families are coming into the theatres, and there's no blood and gore because of the kids. There is a set of people who doesn't like my cinema, but there's a bigger group that likes the kind of movies I make.
I was very much in my room with my marionette stage, you know, creating these incredibly boring things that I felt were so fascinating, and forcing my relatives to come, and charging money for them to see my little productions.
Give me a strapless gown and a rhinestone-studded guitar and some 55-year-olds in my audience, along with their kids and grandkids. Don't give me 'boogie'!
Every video I've made has an inspirational message behind it. Since day one, I thought, 'Okay, I want my audience to be, like, Disney members.' So if that's the case, I have to keep everything rated G.
With my family as my audience, I used to sing, dance, and reenact every scene from 'Grease,' 'Newsies' and 'Les Miserables' as many times as they would let me.
I've always wanted to be an actor who connects with families because once they come to watch your film in the theatres, it becomes a big deal. That's how you sell four tickets at one go.
When you work in animation that's all for a family audience, as an adult you desperately want to break out of that.
The only I would say is a little different is when I know my parents are in the audience. That's never going to be the same as another concert.
Our shows have always been sort of an all-generations thing, people from 6 to 60. The other night, we played a show and we had a woman who was probably 70 to 75 years old, and she was there alone and she was singing every song. On the other end of the spectrum, there was a 7-year-old on his dad's shoulders and the dad is singing along.
I now have two different audiences. There's the one that has been watching my action films for 20 years, and the American family audience. American jokes, less fighting.
We are so used to not having kids around [on Twilight] that we had to really make an effort to try and edit our language.
The thing is when I started doing standup, you had to have a clean act because that's how you got on television. There weren't all these cable shows. Also, I didn't want to have that kind of act in case my family came to see me or my kid one day.
I wanted to be a ballerina as a child - I had a tutu, and I used to stage my own ballets in our front room with my family as the audience.
I can deal with having a terrible night on stage in front a bunch of Glaswegians but not a bunch of Glaswegians and my mum and dad.
I would write plays for my grandmother, who was stone deaf, my mother and the dog, that was our audience.
I make sure I do only audience-friendly films that can be watched with children and the elderly crowd.
A lot of TV has moved away from family viewing. But with 'The Royal Bodyguard,' we have tried to make a show when no one will be worried about sitting there with their kids or their grandma.
Home gigs can be hard because it's an odd collision. More than anything, I feel self-conscious when my family are in the audience. I'm doing this job which is not quite acting - part of it is me, part performance. You're presenting a cartoon of yourself to people who know you as a line-drawing.
We know that families and kids are going to be an important part of our audience, so we've always made sure that we've picked subject matter that was appropriate for kids. But I think if you try to target a movie to kids, you're going to fail.
'Billy Elliot' prides itself on being a family show, and it made sense to specifically cater to a family audience with an earlier evening curtain time.
