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.

Love your parents, but don’t have them as your mates.

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,...

I’ve got a history in my life of difficult times.

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.

Something about theatre perhaps scared me.

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 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.

I’m not very good at standard English.

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.’

New Zealand is a place where you can get well.

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.

My mother certainly doesn’t think I’m charming!

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.

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.