Robert carlyle quotes

I never go anywhere without my iPod.

Acting, the arts in general, is a magnet for the wounded of society.

The thing I miss the most about Scotland is the football.

The more people know about an actor the less convincing they become. A bit of mystery's a good thing.

My wife was a make-up artist, and she's a total product junkie. Our bathroom is packed full of lotions and potions so I end up trying them out.

My understanding of zombie movies is people rising from the dead, from their graves, stuff like that, and walking very slowly.

For me, it's a voyage of self-discovery. I'm able to go on a set and to explore situations, personalities, people and characters that are close to me, or maybe not. Through going there and experiencing these different people and their situations, it helps me to get oriented and develop as a human being. So, acting is fundamental to who I am.

Acting is probably the greatest therapy in the world. You can get a lot stuff out of you on the set so you don't have to take it home with you at night. It's the stuff between the lines, the empty space between those lines which is interesting.

I'm in four different films this year, and I have four different accents. I sound different in every film. You have to love a character to play it well, and change in my work is what I want.

I've never been good at accepting jobs six months down the line. I can't do it. If I'm thinking about this, I can't think about that. So I always seem to fly by the seat of my pants.

I have a reputation for being an improvisational actor, which is true, but I also know what I'm doing so that if the improvisational strand doesn't work I can go back to what I know's already there.

I played a maniac fan who murders a policeman and she did my makeup. I thought anyone interested in me looking like that must have genuinely liked me.

I want to keep audiences off balance, so they don't know who I am or how to take me. If I duck and weave, as Frank Bruno might say, I'll have a longer shelf life.

Every actor I think has got their own number of takes that they like, you know. Some actors like to go all day, you know on the one scene and some actors want to take two takes. I personally like four.

In the late '70s, maybe just before I started, there was still an attitude that if you did film you didn't do TV and vice versa, but that's gone now.

I do tend to divide my childhood into darkness and light, and the first seven years were certainly the darkness.

Early days, I was a bit racked , particularly when I did Hitler, for CBS . That was hellish. That stayed with me for quite a long time.

A lot of Scots have settled in Canada over the years and it's a very easy place for Scots - they understand us, we understand them.

I like to be working and moving - the worst thing you can do to me is stick me in a room all day while you're lighting a shot. That just kills me.

Each performance and each film is what it is. It's right and belongs within that moment. You look at it and try to make it fit your particular part of your character and your particular film.

I never rehearse. Never! I think it's a waste of time.

I've really enjoyed my work in television, but the problem for me is the turnover of directors every week.

I think I have a natural, if I can say that, got a kind of natural ability in comedy.

I was 16 when I was in a band, for about 10 minutes. I went off and did acting after that. So it was a wee moment for me when I sang.

I rant and rave about noise pollution.

There's a kind of unwritten rule: Don't say anything at all, and everything will be fine. It's a producer's medium. The directors aren't there to make any decisions. They're not going to change anything.

A lot of my work is with children and there's a reason for that, because they really level you.

At times of the severest depression, humor is what binds people together.

I don't want to be a luvvie actor. It took a long time for me to accept I was an actor, a professional actor, and that, actually, I make a living out of this.

I loved cinema while growing up and, for the longest time, wanted to be a director.

I feel like I'm the luckiest man on the planet.

Most of the time, you find that the smaller the budget, the more the project is about something substantive.

Anyone that knows me knows what I'm about, and I'm very much a British actor, a European actor.

The script will point you in certain directions and I go the opposite if I can. I try do do one thing and tell a different story with my eyes. I believe what's more interesting is always what's not being said.

I think you should only wear jewellery if it has a story behind it.

Acting is a really insular thing.

Bullying is a terrible, terrible thing.

I often have scripts sent to me with allegedly Scottish characters where I end up telling them, 'You're going to have to rethink this whole thing!

I love sci-fi because it leads in the imagination, and I always say it has the most intelligent fans in the world.

I'd love to do a Columbo-type detective character in a series.

I hate the word 'hippy.'

In troubled times the last thing you want to do is to stick your money into a film. It's such a gamble.

Hunger's a great spur.

I just don't like the whole Hollywood thing.

I used to be a rabid reader, but now it's scripts or nothing - network television is quite relentless, and you can't drop the ball.

I've always believed that as an actor anything you're asked to do is within you. You just have to try and find it.

Vancouver's a very child friendly city, there's... no doubt about that.

Biologically, I'm lucky - an angular face and dark colouring which shows up well on camera.

People in Scotland appreciate homegrown talent, but it's getting harder and harder to get films made in Britain.

My first love is art, and I see a lot of things in an artistic way.

A lot of the characters I play have problems, they are marginalised, they have serious psychological problems, problems with relationships, with childhood. These are big subjects, big subjects. You can't balk at work like that. As an actor, that's as good as it gets.

I owe my father everything.

Anyone who knows anything about me knows that I am a very patriotic guy, in terms of my Scottishness and my roots.

The darker the character, the more interesting.

It's much more fun to be ugly.

My dad was rubbish at all other aspects of his financial life, but he's pretty good at paying the rent.

When I look back at my past and the way I grew up, I grew up on communes. That was meant to be.

Guys, particularly in the West, go to the gym and train for hours and hours to pick up something that is heavier than them. Why would you want to do that?

I don't take a great deal of interest in party politics. Social politics interests me a great deal more.

So many of my friends, old friends I haven't seen in years, made their way out there and got lost, then found their way back. That seems believable to me.

I've always taken my love of children from my father. He was a children magnet. Suddenly, having my first child hit home what my dad went through.

I'd totally be attracted to a geek girl!