TONI COLLETTE / ACTRESS

Known for the offbeat “Muriel’s Wedding” (as Muriel) and “Velvet Goldmine,” Toni Collette slides toward the mainstream alongside Bruce Willis in the thriller “The Sixth Sense”--if playing the mother of a boy who can see the dead is mainstream. The 26-year-old Australian is back to offbeat in English auteur Peter Greenaway’s upcoming “Eight and a Half Women.”

WHERE THERE’S A WILLIS: “When my agent sent me the script for ‘The Sixth Sense’ and said Bruce Willis is attached, I thought, ‘Oh no, I don’t want to act with a gun,’ and I put off reading it. But I picked it up in the middle of the night and was riveted, I was so moved, I cried. [Writer-director] M. Night Shyamalan is amazing.”

STAR QUALITY: “Bruce was great--very generous and pleasant. I don’t know what it must be like living at that level where so many people are aware of who you are and you represent something to them. And if anything will change his image, this film will. This is just so humane.”

YOUTH BRIGADE: “Haley Joel Osmet [who plays her son in ‘The Sixth Sense’] is amazing. I would forget that this person was 10 years old, because he was making choices as an actor with an adult outlook.”

ONE THAT GOT AWAY: “It’s rare that a project just bites me. . . . Was hoping to work with a fellow Australian who is a pioneer, a genius--Baz Luhrmann, who is doing a musical film. But it didn’t happen.”

BOOKED: “Sandy Powell, who designed the costumes for ‘Velvet Goldmine,’ and I have the rights to a book, ‘The Queen of Whale Quay,’ the true story of a woman who at age 5 fell off a camel and decided she wanted to be called Joe and live her life with more of a masculine leaning.”

THE WHOLE STORY: “She [Joe] had many lovers in Paris in the ‘20s and drove an ambulance picking up bodies in the war, and later bought an island in the Caribbean and ruled it like a queen. We have to figure out which part of her life to focus on. She really achieved so much.”

STAGE TO SCREEN: “When I was in drama school, I left to go work with theatrical director Neil Armfield. He’s making his first feature next year based on a fantastic book called ‘Candy’ by Luke Davies, a young Australian writer. The book is amazing and everything Neil does gives something amazing to the audience.”