The best thing coming out of the virtual press junket tour for “The Estate” (currently in US theaters, just skip the reviews) is Yahoo! Entertainment’s Roll Call interviw with Toni Collette, in which she not only talks about her iconic roles in “Muriel’s Wedding”, “The Sixth Sense” and “Hereditary”, but also about the roles she wanted to play or declined, including Martin Scorcese’s “Bringing Out The Dead” and “Bridget Jones’s Diary”. The video can be watched above and in the video archive. Here are the best takeaways:

On losing out “Bringing Out The Dead” while being offered “The Sixth Sense”:

I was actually in New York meeting Martin Scorsese for a film called Bringing Out the Dead. And I was so enamored by Marty and obviously wanted to [work with him]. I knew about him. I didn’t know who Night was. So I was kind of focused on trying to work with Scorsese. Who wouldn’t be? I still wanna work with him. … [Finally I called my agent back] and my agent said, “You’ve been offered…” and I screamed before he got it out. I thought he was saying “You’ve been offered Bringing Out the Dead,” and he said, “You’ve been offered The Sixth Sense.” And I was like, [disappointedly], “Aw.”

On turning down “Bridget Jones’s Diary”:

I really couldn’t make the decision. I was busy doing a musical on Broadway called The Wild Party and I wasn’t available. But sometimes I think about that and I think, ‘I don’t know, that character’s so similar to Muriel.’ It might have been too close. And I try not to repeat myself.

On her infamous last scene in “Hereditary”:

Well, the story to me is just a really sad story about a family grieving. And so when it came to doing that, which is an overtly horrific moment, it felt ridiculous. I was hanging up in the attic, and Ari Aster, the brilliant writer-director, had a very specific idea of the rhythm of how I use the piano string to saw my own head off. So I literally was watching him and he was moving how he wanted me to move until it got faster and faster. So it was kind of technical in terms of just pleasing him in the rhythm of how that movement was. And it was fun, actually. It was fun putting all the prosthetics on and getting all the blood lined up. But it just felt like a complete departure from what the film actually meant to me.

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