Actor

I've been lucky enough to do a tiny bit of Shakespeare onstage over the years.

Integrated education should be the norm - I'm passionate about that.

It was a fabulous time, doing 'Hear My Song.'

One of the things that's wonderful about having a festival in a small town like Enniskillen is that we don't have lots of purpose-built venues so we have to be creative about where we place events.

The variety of my career is amazing and amazingly satisfying.

You show me a family, I'll show you dysfunction.

Of course, that is true of a lot of people, whether they drink or not - celebrities or actors have an image they've created, and an image people like of them.

When you're young and a teenager, there's an air of excitement about living with a time when you have to grasp life as much as you can because it may be taken from you.

You have the most amazing Irish actors. Cillian on 'Peaky Blinders.' And the most amazing actress.

I trained to be a theatre actor, I love the live gig, the transference between an audience and a performer.

When I was at drama school some of the teachers, who were very wise, said to me, 'You're going to be a great actor in your 50s. Now, you're not malleable enough. You're doing one thing well but you need to loosen up a bit.' That happens to actors. You learn more about it and hopefully you get better at it as you get older.

I think if we had an All-Ireland economy and the North was in the U.K. and in the E.U. that would be very good for the North.

I used to feel sorry for some of the guys who were in 'EastEnders,' who had done something terrible to somebody, and people were shouting at them in the street. I'd think: 'God, I'd hate it if that happened to me.'

The Frank Matcham theaters in the West End in particular are incredible pieces of architecture.

Beckett was the most thorough of playwrights. He tells you what to do and if you've any humility at all, you'll take his advice.

I know a lot of actors who have said to me, 'who'd have thought you could put a two-shot on screen for twenty minutes and people would be absolutely locked in, how does that work?' Well it does work, when the story is great and you've got these fabulous twists and turns - so those are my favorite bits!

You've got the armor and everything on, and you think, 'This is going to be great.' Then they give you a sword, and you think, 'Ah, it's not too bad.' And after 10 minutes you're thinking, 'Please, I can't be doing this all day.' I mean, I really don't know how people sustained themselves in real battles.

It's much better as an actor if you can bring as much of yourself as possible to a character.

It would help a lot of directors if they tried a little bit of acting, so they can understand what the process is about. It certainly wouldn't do them any harm.

Portadown was the most marginalized of all the Nationalist communities in the North. Suddenly we were living in a town where, if you were Catholic, you literally couldn't walk up the street without getting into some kind of conflict.