Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I'm not really attracted to action sequences, because my experience is that it's quite a slow process to shoot them, and often we're not involved as actors.
Mainly I was able to perform with music - I played the French horn, I would sing, and I was a drummer in the pipe band. So I think it was a way to show off.
I don't want to make decisions about what I'm going to do before I'm doing it because I base my acting off my partner and off the other people in the scene.
I'm doing my bit for the women's movement. The women have always been naked in movies, and now I'm just desperate to take my clothes off as much as possible.
What matters most with any regimen, whether it's to lose weight or stop drinking or smoking, is your willingness to seek help and your desire to say 'no more.
There are people who are younger than I who are more uptight than I am. It's not necessarily an age thing. I mean nobody is offering me 20-year old leads any more.
...as an actor there`s nothing better than a great moody moment to play with nothing to say. It`s so much easier to do because you can really get inside your head.
I remember in Shallow Grave I remember a few times when we'd only have to do one take. But when you did have to do more than one, you'd build on the one you'd done.
I've always like sort of, as an actor, I'm drawn to exploring how we are as human beings in given situations and how we act and how we react and what makes us tick.
I think my home is in that sort of the part of cinema that's disappeared is where I lived, that sort of mid-budget you know, drama. I suppose that's what I am known for.
I was born in '71, so I remember bits of glam rock on 'Top of the Pops' toward the late '70s, but I had no idea what kind of world it was. I didn't like the music, either.
I wanted to make sure that I was making films about the world. So I thought well, I should go and see it. I'm spending a lot of time in - we call them caravans in Britain.
The other two things are... well, I had a huge appetite for old black and white movies on BBC 2. At the weekends they used to run matinees, and the more romantic the better.
I got married because I fell in love with this woman. I had a baby with her because we wanted to have children. But that's not because of some philosophical ideal at all, no.
I never imagined it wouldn't work out for me. I had that absolute certainty in myself that has seen me through, I think, and my parents were absolutely behind me all the way.
I was forced to make the decision between art and music which are the only two things I liked as opposed to being able to do them both because that's what I was interested in.
I found my partner, my life partner, and I really am in love with my wife, and we have a lovely time, and we share a long history together and children together, and that's it.
I'm sent a script. I read the script. If I love it, I want to do it. And that's it I don't care who's in it, how much money is behind it, really to an extent who's directing it.
It is always a nice feeling when you are challenged by a scene and you walk out of trailer and you go on set going I don't know. And then half an hour later you're walking back.
Then I left school at 16 and worked in Perth Repertory Theatre, which was quite nearby where I lived. And I worked there for about six or seven months, as part of the stage crew.
When you take away the phone and e-mail and you don't have a million things to run around to, it allows your mind the space to think more expansively about the things that matter.
I believe that unless it's a scene where I'm alone, then of course I could do what I want but I think good acting is about what happens between people, not on your face and my face.
Drama school can't make you a brilliant actor, but you can do stuff for three years - you're not going to be fired. You should just go for it all, even the stuff you think is codswallop.
There's very few directors that know what that rehearsal's for. And often it's just about calming down the director. If he could see it or she sees it, she goes oh, it's going to be okay.
I'm sure it's not great fun for them, or for any parent, when their child says they want to be an actor, 'cos it's quite an uncertain business and it can be terribly hard for most actors.
My feeling about seeing the world is that its going to change you necessarily, just the very fact of being out there and meeting people from different cultures and different ways of life.
My feeling about seeing the world is that it's going to change you necessarily, just the very fact of being out there and meeting people from different cultures and different ways of life.
Producing good stuff can be quite tough, and it involves a lot of frustration, but I always like things to be jolly and happy, and I forget thats actually not the point at the end of the day.
Producing good stuff can be quite tough, and it involves a lot of frustration, but I always like things to be jolly and happy, and I forget that's actually not the point at the end of the day.
I was quite interested to do television series and I started exploring an idea of a longer commitment, a new idea, a new TV show that would've meant a longer commitment but I opened my mind up.
For all of the hurtling towards climate change, there's also a lot more understanding of it than there was when we were kids. They don't call environmentalists tree huggers any more, so there's hope!
You can be playing a line some way and the director wants you to change that, or you can disagree. But I always think that the creative conversation between director and actor is what leads to good work.
Giving kids whatever they ask for is disastrous parenting. There's no sense of something earned. I'm sorry, but when you're 12, you don't need a new cell phone every few months just because a new one comes out.
UNICEF is successfully giving children and young people all over the world opportunities and hope. Just like the ones we met on the Long Way Down - protecting them from exploitation and giving them chances in life.
I'm just into making quality stuff if I can, with interesting people and good scripts. But it's very important that it's about something and that it says something. Otherwise, I don't know what the point is, really.
A lot of parents tell their children that if they want to be an actor, that's fine, but they should do something else first, so they've got something to fall back on. It doesn't work like that, as far as I'm concerned.
I think theatre reminds us what we're doing as actors, because every night and every matinee day, you have an audience telling you what's working and what's not. And that's very good for us as actors to hone our skills.
I grew up in a very small town in Scotland, a little place called Crieff which is beautiful and it's at the foothills to the highlands. It's a very beautiful part of the world. It's a small, I suppose quite conservative place.
A million pounds sounds like a lot of money now that I'm saying it. But in terms of moviemaking, it's not a lot of money. And yet you can see what can be done with that, with the talent of a great cinematographer and great director and actors.
I think the script is the key. Regardless of how great everybody else is working on a film, if you're working on a script that you don't think is great, you're not gonna be able to make a great film. Whereas if the script is great, then you can.
I fight cynicism. It`s too easy. It`s really boring. It`s much harder to be positive and see the wonder of everything. Cynicism is a bunch of people who aren`t as talented as other people, knocking them because they make them feel even more untalented.
I was with a friend of mine recently who was dying and while he was lying there with his family around his bed, I just knew that was it, that was the best you can hope for in life - to have your family and the people who love you around you at the end.
Everyone has to understand what we're saying to one another and there's no point in me thinking the line means this and the person I'm speaking to thinks it means something else. So there's a certain amount of analyzing of text that's of course necessary.
The script, I always believe, is the foundation of everything. And if you don't connect to that foundation, if you don't believe in that and feel that you wanna spend three, four months of your life exploring it, then all of the other elements are secondary.
People are incredibly rude about it sometimes. Like "What? You're married?" Strange reaction to have. Proves what people's ideas about marriage are. "We're having a baby." "What?" As if it's the end of the world. Of course, it's the start of a brilliant world.
I don't like being told that's where you, you know, if you walk on set and somebody was "okay, you're here and you're going to walk over there on this line." And my reaction is always how do you know? How do you know that's what I'm going to do? How do any of us know?
It's impossible to put your finger on what that is exactly other than protecting the environment that the actors get to find the scenes and build the scenes and invest in them. I think that's key and that's what I've learned from all the great directors I've worked with.
If you're suddenly doing something you don't want to do for four years, just so you've got something to fall back on, by the time you come out you don't have that 16-year-old drive any more and you'll spend your life doing something you never wanted to do in the first place.
I’ve always been really uninterested in politicians and the acts of the Houses of Parliament, or government as an idea. But I’m interested in politics in that I’m a member of the world, and I have strong feelings of right and wrong, but I can’t get into the ins and outs of it.
I am so honoured to have been given this opportunity to become an Ambassador. It's a new and different venture for me and one that I know will widen my wider perspective on life. I'm in a position to use the recognition from my work to do something really positive for children