My first love is art, and I see a lot of things in an artistic way.
Robert Carlyle
I owe my father everything.
I feel like I'm the luckiest man on the planet.
People go to the movies to watch a film and all they're thinking about is the actress's cellulite they saw in a magazine.
To pursue a career in Hollywood you have to have a personality bypass. Look at the top 20 stars in the world - there's probably only two actors among them. Hollywood's not about you as an actor. It's about your currency, what you 'bring to the table'. And I've never been one to jump through hoops for anyone.
The thing I miss the most about Scotland is the football.
The more people know about an actor the less convincing they become. A bit of mystery's a good thing.
I want to keep audiences off balance, so they don't know who I am or how to take me. If I duck and weave, as Frank Bruno might say, I'll have a longer shelf life.
I rant and rave about noise pollution.
I used to be a rabid reader, but now it's scripts or nothing - network television is quite relentless, and you can't drop the ball.
Vancouver's a very child friendly city, there's... no doubt about that.
A lot of the characters I play have problems, they are marginalised, they have serious psychological problems, problems with relationships, with childhood. These are big subjects, big subjects. You can't balk at work like that. As an actor, that's as good as it gets.
I often have scripts sent to me with allegedly Scottish characters where I end up telling them, 'You're going to have to rethink this whole thing!'
Acting, the arts in general, is a magnet for the wounded of society.
Acting is probably the greatest therapy in the world. You can get a lot stuff out of you on the set so you don't have to take it home with you at night. It's the stuff between the lines, the empty space between those lines which is interesting.
I hate the word 'hippy.'
The quality of TV drama nowadays is getting better and better. They've had to invent a new term for it: 'high-end television.'
We met in Cracker. I played a maniac fan who murders a policeman and she did my makeup. I thought anyone interested in me looking like that must have genuinely liked me.
The script will point you in certain directions and I go the opposite if I can. I try do do one thing and tell a different story with my eyes. I believe what's more interesting is always what's not being said.
Biologically, I'm lucky - an angular face and dark colouring which shows up well on camera.
I'm in four different films this year, and I have four different accents. I sound different in every film. You have to love a character to play it well, and change in my work is what I want.
The darker the character, the more interesting.
Every actor I think has got their own number of takes that they like, you know. Some actors like to go all day, you know on the one scene and some actors want to take two takes. I personally like four.
It depends who the director is you know, I mean Ken Loach for instance. I've done up to 32 takes with him.
I just don't like the whole Hollywood thing.
Hunger's a great spur.
It took a long time for me to accept I was an actor, a professional actor, and that, actually, I make a living out of this.
I love sci-fi because it leads in the imagination, and I always say it has the most intelligent fans in the world.
I'd totally be attracted to a geek girl!
In the late '70s, maybe just before I started, there was still an attitude that if you did film you didn't do TV and vice versa, but that's gone now.
People in Scotland appreciate homegrown talent, but it's getting harder and harder to get films made in Britain.
Anyone who knows anything about me knows that I am a very patriotic guy, in terms of my Scottishness and my roots.
A lot of my work is with children and there's a reason for that, because they really level you.
Anyone that knows me knows what I'm about, and I'm very much a British actor, a European actor.
I loved cinema while growing up and, for the longest time, wanted to be a director.
A lot of Scots have settled in Canada over the years and it's a very easy place for Scots - they understand us, we understand them.
I like to be working and moving - the worst thing you can do to me is stick me in a room all day while you're lighting a shot. That just kills me.
I never rehearse. Never! I think it's a waste of time.
I'd love to do a Columbo-type detective character in a series.
Each performance and each film is what it is. It's right and belongs within that moment. You look at it and try to make it fit your particular part of your character and your particular film.
I think I have a natural, if I can say that, got a kind of natural ability in comedy.
Of course, I love chats with various actors about the process and how they do it. To me, if it's not on the camera, if it's not there, it's not worth it. It really just isn't worth it.
I'd work with Danny Boyle every day of the week. No matter what he was doing I would do that.
I was 16 when I was in a band, for about 10 minutes. I went off and did acting after that. So it was a wee moment for me when I sang.
When I look back at it now, my past and the way I grew up, I grew up on communes.
I've really enjoyed my work in television, but the problem for me is the turnover of directors every week.
The U.K. and the U.S. are very different countries, and it really shows in the television.
The first thing you should know about me is when I was three years old my mother left me and my father. And that was traumatic obviously for my father - he suffered a nervous breakdown at that time in his life.
If there's anything you want to ask your parents, ask them before they go, because once they go, they're gone.
I do tend to divide my childhood into darkness and light, and the first seven years were certainly the darkness.
