Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
People love watching medical dramas - they also love watching documentaries about the workings of the brain.
As I told Piers Morgan, 'Catholics have confession, whereas Northern Irish Protestants only have interviews.'
I've always been a family man and count myself as one of those who are lucky to have the comfort of a family.
People don't watch TV only to relate to stuff. They also watch to find out about a world they can't relate to.
In my life, I have made the occasional catastrophic choice, and it's just a case of moving on and learning from it.
My early ambitions were the same as they are now - to play for Manchester United. I was, and still am, football mad.
Some actors can distance themselves from the parts they play, but I fall into the category who use bits of themselves.
I've never felt that acting was my vocation - never had that tortured thing. I love acting, but it doesn't feed my soul.
While I've never 'phoned in' a performance, I think I have given some performances where I could have been a bit braver.
Perhaps our imagination needs crime stories to fulfill some craving we have, as a way to assuage a darkness in ourselves.
Richard Armitage is very good at the old horse riding because of course he did it in 'Robin Hood,' so he's very good at that.
Who am I to pass judgment? Judgment has been passed on me, but I adhere to, 'Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.'
Belfast is a city which, while not forgetting its past, is living comfortably with its present and looking forward to its future.
I get an awful lot of people coming up and saying they went to school with me. There must have been 80,000 pupils at that school!
There will only ever be 13 dwarves in 'The Hobbit' - and I was one of them. If I had my time again, would I do it? Yeah, I would.
If you are going to tell a story about a child going missing, it's going to have similarities with a real life child going missing.
I don't know a single person who doesn't regret the things that they did to hurt their parents, or the things they didn't say to them.
I'm not strong-willed enough or unkind enough... or maybe simply not wise enough to tell a journalist that a subject is out of bounds.
I was one of the many kids in Northern Ireland who grew up in the countryside and had an idyllic childhood well away from the Troubles.
Ever since I left Northern Ireland, I've always been pretty comfortable on my own, which contradicts a lot of people's perceptions of me.
Because I grew up with women, I have a certain amount of charm, and I'm all right to get on with, kind enough, funny enough, blah blah blah.
Actually, I played Pontius Pilate as nice. An actor spends his life thinking he is Christ, and then he gets to play the character that killed him.
It's hard to make a film in Britain. It's hard to raise money. The best stuff that is shot on film in Britain is usually shot on film for television.
Perhaps not being very self-aware in the past masked depression. I think I was confused. I think I was immature. I think I probably was quite depressed.
I didn't much like Las Vegas. The noise of the place and the whole 24-hour, 'let's play the slot machines all night' culture of the place just left me cold.
My agent Sue realised after 'Cold Feet' that I could have spent the rest of my life doing similar roles. So she was instrumental in moving me away from that.
I've never thought of myself as a classic leading man. I'm a character actor who happens to play leading roles. Come on, look at me. I'm really Desperate Dan.
When you see a tumour in the brain, it's an ugly looking thing. It's kind of black, grisly and messy. Or it can be white. To see it taken away is just amazing.
The reality of life in Northern Ireland is that if you were Protestant, you learned British history, and if you were Catholic, you learned Irish history in school.
Theatres, along with the likes of the Ulster Orchestra, for example, are the cultural heartbeats of our towns and cities, and without them, we are much poorer for it.
There's some irony in playing a journalist after some of the stuff that has been written about me, but it's a great profession, particularly investigative journalism.
I'm increasingly realising our consciousness and subconsciousness are extremely different, and our subconsciousness motivates us, but so far, I don't know what drove or motivates me.
My mother taught me what it is to have a sense of humour; my dad, who was a headmaster, everything you need to know about hard work. My dad is the most decent man you could come across.
What I discovered all over Ireland is that people living simple lives by the sea or in the remote countryside seem a lot calmer than city folk with their iPads and their Android phones.
The thing to remember is that the work comes first, and not to get distracted by anything else. If you keep focused on the work, everything else will fall into place. That's my mantra now.
I grew up loving women and without misogyny, rancour or prejudice, totally loved and loving. And no matter what has happened since, I don't think I have treated women in my life very badly.
When I turned 40, subconsciously, life was a blank sheet. Before, it was disjointed, and I was very displaced and quite mad, but it was a brilliant time. Everyone thinks I must have been unhappy.
I have three older sisters who, when we were children, used to hold me down on a bad day and put make-up all over me, so I've had an aversion to it all my life and hate sitting down in the make-up chair.
We have to get behind the scientists and push for a dementia breakthrough. It could be that we fear dementia out of a sense of hopelessness, but there is hope, and it rests in the hands of our scientists.
That thing of briefly losing sight of a child happened to me when the kids were younger, and you can't see them in the supermarket or wherever. It's a terrible, terrible moment... the most unimaginable horror.
Funnily enough, Northern Ireland is a great example of where politics can win over conflict. The decision to down arms and follow a political path would have been unthinkable once. It shows just what is possible.
Like the character I played in Jekyll, we all have different masks we put on for different occasions. As much as we all want to lead decent lives, we're also attracted by the idea that something dark may lurk within us.
Like the character I played in 'Jekyll', we all have different masks we put on for different occasions. As much as we all want to lead decent lives, we're also attracted by the idea that something dark may lurk within us.
I feel old and vulnerable. I now realise that I knew nothing and know nothing, but back when my career was beginning, I thought I was a man when, in fact, I was a dewy-eyed boy who'd not seen an avocado or eaten a tomato.
When I was at drama school, I was totally broke, and a lot of my mates had jobs and were financially very good to me, so if, for example, I take them away on a trip to a football match in Europe, it means that I can pay them back a bit.
I think often there is great rivalry between neurosurgeons and cardiac surgeons. I think I maybe have a bit of bias with neurosurgeons' opinion that nothing tops neurosurgery! But that makes for a quite interesting conflict between the two.
I want to beat up Michael Fassbender in a movie. I was with him at the beginning of his career when he did an episode of 'Murphy's Law.' He's a proper superstar and enormously talented, but I want to do a scene where I properly duff him up.
If you are a Northern Irish actor, maybe subconsciously more than consciously, you do have an instinctive responsibility at some point to tackle the recent history of where we have come from. It's not only a responsibility, but a privilege.
My best friends are still the ones I first attached myself to when I went to school because, all of a sudden, I was leaving the rather pampered and occasionally very annoying world of having three older sisters to go to a male-dominated world.
A lot of people of my Ulster Protestant background would have been very suspicious of the notion of a film about Bloody Sunday. Our fear would have been that it would be terribly anti-Britain and anti-soldiers: a piece of nationalist propaganda.