My preference is for good writing. It doesn’t matter if it’s for film or TV. Whatever. It starts with the writing. Even though I’ve had problems with writers, it doesn’t matter how great of an...

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 started a French degree at university, but packed it in when I realised I really wanted to be an actor.

Unification is less important than the fact Ireland is now conflict-free.

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...

I never forget that I’m extremely fortunate.

It’s easier to act in your own accent.

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...

Belfast is a city which, while not forgetting its past, is living comfortably with its present and looking forward to its future.

Drama asks some uncomfortable questions at times… It goes to pretty dark places.

People love watching medical dramas – they also love watching documentaries about the workings of the brain.

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.

As I flew back from New Zealand to bury my mother, it occurred to me that no matter how harrowing her loss was and how keenly it will always be felt, there was, nevertheless, a...

I think a lot of us who grew up in Northern Ireland weren’t politicised enough, frankly.

When I went to university, I was already working professionally with the Ulster Actors.

It’s ridiculous, but it’s horrible going bald. Anyone who says it isn’t is lying.

I thought I was God’s gift to mankind and the greatest Irishman since George Best.

It’s easy to get carried away with yourself.

Before I read the ‘Bloody Sunday’ script, I have to admit I hadn’t thought about it that much. There was probably even part of me which assumed there was no smoke without fire. That the...

I do commercials, but I also go to Sudan as an ambassador for UNICEF.

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.

Producers get very jittery about things.

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.

Brain surgeons are dealing with the very last thread of life, and they have to be very confident, but I think they tend to remember their failures rather than their successes, and that must be...

I went to India with UNICEF in connection with Manchester United to raise money for children’s education.

When people say, ‘You’re perceived as a sex symbol,’ I love the idea of that because it’s so absurd.

‘Spoilt’ is a euphemism for ‘loved.’

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.

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.

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.

I love nothing more than going to eat by myself with a newspaper.

I actually started out on the stage as a singer.

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.

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.

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...

I’m an actor, learning lines and saying them in the right order.

When you’re brought up in a Unionist culture, you can’t help but feel Unionist.

Ours was a very progressive Protestant family, but my parents were God-loving rather than God-fearing. We went to church, and I still go with my mum and dad when I return home – it’s a...

Acting is something you didn’t do in Ireland.

Kids at a certain age don’t necessarily want to be dragged to the other side of the world.

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...

I think teaching should be a vocation, and they should be paid more for it.

I am in the public eye, and I accept that my actions may be open to question.

Some actors can distance themselves from the parts they play, but I fall into the category who use bits of themselves.

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...

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...

I’m no pin-up.

While I’ve never ‘phoned in’ a performance, I think I have given some performances where I could have been a bit braver.

My early ambitions were the same as they are now – to play for Manchester United. I was, and still am, football mad.

Acting was a godsend. I found myself because I loved acting.