When I did the film ‘Hear My Voice’ a few years ago, I disappeared fully up my own backside for a while. Because I thought my career was taking off, I became a bit of...

When I was growing up, Belfast City Hall was surrounded by security, and we had no access to it. But now, people come in and out of it all the time. On a nice day,...

I’m Ulster Presbyterian. We understand the need to work hard from an early age.

You can get a bit world-weary in this job, and ‘The Passion’ reminded me of what a fantastic job acting is and how lucky I am to be doing it.

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...

All my adult life, there was the Troubles. That was the backdrop of my life.

My nightmare is that I don’t want to be OK.

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.

Perhaps our imagination needs crime stories to fulfill some craving we have, as a way to assuage a darkness in ourselves.

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!

The best way of enjoying your money is to spend it on other people. I don’t need much.

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.

When you suddenly become successful, the change is enormous, both financially and in terms of recognition and the way people treat you. I found that hard to deal with. I got very guilty about it,...

I’ve always been a family man and count myself as one of those who are lucky to have the comfort of a family.

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...

Brain surgery is a fairly aggressive process. There’s a lot to get through. There’s the beautiful, delicate shaving first, which is really lovely. There’s a wonderful ceremony of putting all the covers on, so only...

Although surgeons know how to deal with bits of the brain, they don’t really know how it works.

My wife is a very strong woman.

If I get to the end of my life, and people say, ‘He was in ‘Cold Feet,’ well, I was, and it was great. I thought the fourth series wasn’t great. I thought there were...

There’s no such thing as unwanted attention for an actor.

I lived a dual life, and when my dual life exploded, I began to feel much happier.

The whole process of making ‘Bloody Sunday’ was difficult but extraordinary.

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.

I’d be a very easy therapist’s subject.

I’ve never felt that acting was my vocation – never had that tortured thing. I love acting, but it doesn’t feed my soul.

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.

I spend my money on holidays and eating out, and it allows me to be generous.

As fabulous as technology is, it can also make us very anxious.

My wife would say I’m more Hyde than Jekyll!

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...

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...

I loved my time growing up in Northern Ireland doing youth drama, that is where it all began for me.

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.

You don’t learn charm. It’s not something that you can acquire. I have used it much in my life with great success, but it’s not necessarily what makes me an actor. It became a very...

I’m not an actor who is often asked to be in period things.

Improvising political dialogue is not easy.

Several years ago, I began losing my hair, and like a lot of men, it was a major concern to me, in fact it was practically an obsession. But, also I’m an actor, so I’m...

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.

As I told Piers Morgan, ‘Catholics have confession, whereas Northern Irish Protestants only have interviews.’

Northern Ireland has treated me well, you know?

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.

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...

I spend an awful lot of time by myself and enjoy that.

Tumours can come out of nowhere.

In my life, I have made the occasional catastrophic choice, and it’s just a case of moving on and learning from it.

I’ve heard some duff Irish accents. The worst must be Mickey Rourke.

It’s a complicated relationship with the place one grows up in, particularly if it’s Northern Ireland.

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...

No one wanted to own Bloody Sunday.

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.