Quotes

In the acting game, you spend a long time fighting against what the director perceives you to be. And half the time the directors don't know.

Most actors I know come from a screwed up background, so it makes sense that if you can walk on to a space and recreate your reality, then that's the place that will become very dear. And what I love about actors and the bohemian scene, for all that a lot of us are wankers, there's a genuine classlessness and there's no discrimination on the basis of sexuality, colour, religion. We're by no means the perfect species but on the whole we're a pretty nice bunch of people to be around...

But once you're in the movie business, that's where you meet the real criminals. You meet the guys who no law will ever prosecute - these are the studio bosses, the guys who swan around town with £80m yachts.

I worked with murderers for a long time after I left university - one thing you realise about the gangs and the criminals is that it's acting by another means. If you go into a bank or a shop and you want them to believe that you're going to shoot them, that's an acting exercise. If you want to turn to someone else who's as tooled up as you are and persuade them to put their knife down because you'll use your knife, that's an acting exercise. Nine out of 10 delinquents are frustrated actors.

Braveheart (1995) was a real big deal. In our lifetime we had never seen the Scots as the heroes. They were always the funny guy or the drunk or whatever.