Every generation is obsessed with the decade before they were born.
Fiona Shaw
I'm not afraid of chaos and I'm happy talking to strangers. I really love not knowing where I'm going.
Acting doesn't have to be threadbare misery all the time.
I had a ball doing Harry Potter.
Like a lot of Irish households we read a lot of Irish history. It was almost Soviet, raising the next generation with a mythic view of their history.
I find it incredibly tedious, hate that it murders itself with its own conservative pomposity.
Once you've done one style, you leave it for a while.
To be honest I live among the English and have always found them to be very honest in their business dealings. They are noble, hard-working and anxious to do the right thing. But joy eludes them, they lack the joy that the Irish have.
The Americans are very clear, and obsessed with nouns.
I take the theater seriously in that I loathe it, I'm bored by it.
Theater is dangerously open to repetition. It's exciting when you hit on a new way.
One moment cannot be the most important.
Also, an area that interests me - and it will probably take years to state what I mean - is the period of the rise of democracy, with Tom Paine, which is around the turn of the 18th century into the 19th.
Even when they have nothing, the Irish emit a kind of happiness, a joy.
I would say the next imminent hot writers are often the writers from the decade before you were born.
I enjoy making films, but my heart is in the stage. Every night you have to be on. There's no second take.
There was no professional theater in Cork, but still I did a lot of performing.
My mother adores singing and plays piano. My uncle was a phenomenal pianist. My brother John is a double bassist. I used to play the piano, badly, and cello. My brother Peter played violin.
And by endlessly sanitizing our feelings, we actually feed a disgruntled nation.
People who are good at film have a relationship with the camera.
This whole tribal loyalty seems to have gone.
I'm not on the run from anything and I'm not at all clear about what I'm running towards. But as some great writer put it, I want to be certain that when I arrive at death, I'm totally exhausted.
I certainly had no intention of playing a man.
So I just play the character, I play the lines.
Theater dates very quickly.
The word democracy has no meaning. Duty has gone. Only rights remain.
A lot of Irish people perform. They perform in drawing rooms. They sing songs and they play piano.
The energy released by it is enormous and it becomes quite addictive, the power between the audience and the actor.
I can hardly decide what plays I should be in.
There is a great relief in experiencing the worst vicariously.
I think America becomes more disgruntled by going to the movies and having an endlessly good time at them.
I just think that things should be allowed to run their course, and not turned into a Disney ride.
My mother taught me to read.
Irish people are educated not only about artistry but local history.
There's something about the Irish that is remarkable.
There once was a demographic survey done to determine if money was connected to happiness and Ireland was the only place where this did not turn out to be true.
I would love to write the story of my upbringing in Ireland.
Honestly, I get more recognized for 'Three Men and a Little Lady' than 'Harry Potter'.
A relationship is sent by God and accident.
I loathe bad theater and most theatre is very bad because it's repetitious, unexciting and, dangerously, it is sometimes praised for those things.
I once saw my mother playing Mary Magdalene in a parish event. But she had to put the role aside in order to go and front the choir who were singing at the same occasion. She left the stage halfway through the Crucifixion.
