Quotes

I was living in London and I thought, "There's nothing here for me anymore". I don't want to become this actor who's going to be doing this occasional good work in the theater and then ever diminishing bad television. I thought I'd rather do bad movies than bad television because you get more money for it.

In a sense I feel very much a part of the cinema now in a way where when I come back to the theater now I feel like a visitor. The cinema is really what I enjoy. I want to do more independent movies.

I'm an actor who does really interesting work in independent movies. I want to keep doing that because I don't want the burden of an opening weekend sitting on my shoulders.

I'm 100% Celt. In fact, I'm directly related to the progenitor of the high kings of Ireland, Niall of the Nine Hostages.

As a boy, I was never interested in theater because I came from a working-class Scottish home. I thought, "I want to do movies." Then it was finding the means to do it.

[on Spike Lee] Ah, there's a director. Astonishing, Spike Lee. A feisty guy, but a guy who's, I think, incredibly misunderstood. I think people review his politics or his color as opposed to his filmmaking sometimes. Because he's a wonderful, wonderful filmmaker and a lover of the art. He stands up for things, but he's also a brilliant storyteller who really understands the whole.

Unlike New Zealand, which has nothing especially predatory, Australia is full of spiders and crocodiles and all kinds of animals that will eat you and sting you.

Feudal societies don't create great cinema; we have great theatre. The egalitarian societies create great cinema. The Americans, the French. Because equality is sort of what the cinema deals with. It deals with stories which don't fall into 'Everybody in their place and who's who,' and all that. But the theatre's full of that.

The trouble with New York today is that it's lost its balance. I love the new, greener New York, but it takes all kinds of worlds to make a World.

The hardest thing to do in movies is be a day-part player. You have to go in, make your mark, and get out. There's a lot of leading actors who are not good for a lot of a movie, and then suddenly they have good moments, and they're like stepping-stones across a particularly feisty stream. They build careers out of that.

I always think I look like the Elephant Man - I can't get used to my own image.

Even the Australians don't know how beautiful their own country is. Particularly where we were shooting 'The Straits.' Most of my stuff was done on an aboriginal settlement on the south shore, opposite Cairns, which I believe was the site where the last person was eaten in Australia.

The heritage of a British actor revolves around the challenges of playing the classic roles to meet certain levels of success as an actor. In America, the heritage of an actor is based on cinema mainly.

The fact is that Hollywood, from as early as the sixties to the present time, has ghettoized cinema into the big industry, a marketing industry. In doing this, the audiences have lost touch with the aspects of film which were to be informative and educational and even spiritual.

Actors in general have become very spoiled in the roles they choose these days. When I first started in this profession - about a hundred years ago in the last century - it was all about taking risks, it was about doing the job and honing the craft.

There are characters that have made me uncomfortable. I did a film called 'Rob Roy,' and I played Killearn, who was this sort of greasy fallen-angel character who was voyeuristic and sleazy and really unpleasant. It was a great role, but I didn't especially enjoy living with this awful man for the length of time it took to make the movie.

People always make that mistake when they talk about theatre - the notion of the 'theatrical' meaning something separate from life. If it doesn't relate to life, it doesn't relate to anything.

I used to do a lot of fencing in the theater and a lot of horse riding in the early days, so I'm used to it in a way. If you're classically trained like I am, it's a little bit like mother's milk to me. I enjoy it.

My mother Molly had a nervous breakdown after my father Chic died, aged 50. He was a very generous man who ran a shop in Dundee giving a lot of people tick. When he died, a lot of people hadn't paid their bills, so he died with a lot of debt. After he died, my mother went doolally.

I actually went to see Rushmore (1998), and I came late, and I missed myself. It was great, that scene. I caught that scene the other day on TV, funny enough, the first scene that you see with Jason Schwartzman and myself, where we talk about his grades. That's a brilliant scene, and I have to say, we play it brilliantly.

Charles Laughton, who's a great hero of mine, only ever made one film and it happens to be one of the great films ever, which is 'The Night of the Hunter.' It's full of his kind of imagination and creation and how you do things and just in the way he used the studio, I just thought it was a fantastical way of using the studio.

There's so much light in Broughty Ferry. I think the humor in Glasgow is darker, because it's much more gloomy, there's a perpetual misery there.

The problem is that the U.K. in essence is a feudal society. It's everyone in their place.

I think I must be the only British actor who's played both Stalin and Trotsky. I need to play Lenin so I can make it a triptych.

I didn't have this feeling that I should be a leading actor in the cinema. And I wouldn't want the responsibility of the opening weekend.

For me, it's just acting. It's pretending. The best actors are children, and children don't do research. You never see a child going, 'I'm wondering about my motivation here. How can I do this toy? How can I do this train? I don't feel train.'

I did a film in which Andy Garcia and Michael Keaton both played the leads, Desperate Measures (1998) and interestingly enough it was their biggest payday. The film didn't do well, and it kind of marked their careers. They've done less since. It all changed.

I've directed a couple of times in the theater, but I wouldn't make a habit of it because it's too consuming.

I've always wanted to make a film.

There is a history of mental breakdowns in my family. It will never happen to me but it has happened to others in the family.

I enjoy acting now more than I ever have. I've had lots of difficult times when I was younger, but that was all tied up with thwarted ambition. It's hard being a young actor, because you don't realize until later that it's only ever about doing the work.

Most critics are stupid. They really are. Theatre criticism has gone right down the tubes. You think of those wonderful critics of the past, there's nobody to match them now; because they don't do their homework.