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.