Robert Carlyle

“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.”

“My dad was rubbish at all other aspects of his financial life, but he's pretty good at paying the rent.”

“I've always taken my love of children from my father. He was a children magnet. Suddenly, having my first child hit home what my dad went through.”

“There are a lot of things that make up a performance, a lot of technical things. It isn't always just about pulling it up from the darkest recesses of your mind or your heart. It's your experience and your observation.”

“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 love sci-fi because it leads in the imagination, and I always say it has the most intelligent fans in the world.”

“In troubled times the last thing you want to do is to stick your money into a film. It's such a gamble.”

“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.”

“I don't take a great deal of interest in party politics. Social politics interests me a great deal more.”

“Acting, the arts in general, is a magnet for the wounded of society.”