As much as possible, I try to encourage people to use stunt men because that is really their job.

When I started in films, it never really occurred to me that I could make a career out of acting.

Every actor wants more offers, but I get enough and I do like to be busy.

The animatronics now are certainly more lifelike than before. They’ve advanced in exactly the same was as the CGI has. It is all really out of my area of expertise, but it definitely made my...

I hate to say it, but there seems to have been some sort of dumbing down as far as movies go.

I don’t think I really have the insight or the inquiring to be an astronomer, and I don’t think I have the wherewithal to be an astronaut. But if I had to choose which one...

Try and fit in in a New Zealand playground with an Armagh accent – it doesn’t work.

When you hear actors say, ‘Oh, I did all my own stunts,’ it is usually crap! It’s one thing jumping into water or whatever, but the real stunts are more properly done by stunt men....

I’m not big on Champagne, but I’d take along a bottle of Cristal to pop for when the boat comes to the rescue.

I can tell you where I was when Kennedy was shot – which was in the common room at school. I heard about it on the old valve radio. At the time of Armstrong’s landing,...

I love the fact that you can’t tell pinot noir what to do; it has to express itself. And it’s always just beyond your grasp. If you do manage to get a hold of it,...

No intelligent man wears a moustache voluntarily – you can write that down.

I understand acting and I understand actors. I don’t really understand the world of celebrity. That’s just bizarre. Those sorts of elements I’m at sea with.

It’s fairly hard to find gay drug dealers that aren’t locked up or dead, or 23, so it’s fairly oblique research. But I have some good contacts, not in the gay drug world but in...

I enjoy some physical stuff. But if I had a choice between playing a scene where it’s raining, it’s terribly cold, I’m wet and I’m being drowned and playing a scene with dinosaur eggs in...

I can never really remember what I look like. I’m just sort of neutral. I don’t think I’m sort of, you know, hideous.

Something to be said for silence,

People turn into fools when they see a movie star and do weird things.

I get very antsy and nervous if I don’t know what the next job is.

There’s part of me that loves traveling. And there’s part of me that just loves staying home. It’s a double-edged sword.

I go by the role pretty much. And I think the only genre I haven’t gotten to do but I’d love to is a western, but no one has ever asked me to do that....

‘Dexter’ I’m very fond of. I got addicted to that.

I’ve worked all my life to shed myself of any character.

I think you need brains to do any Shakespeare with any authority. I could do Shakespeare, but not with any authority.

When I left university I was working for a documentary film company for six or seven years to the great relief of my father whose greatest waking fear was that I would become an actor.

If you want to learn about America, watch ‘The Wire.’ It’s a profound piece of entertainment.