I'm Irish and very proud of being Irish, but as an actor, your extraction should be secondary, really. You should be able to embody whatever character it is, wherever the character comes from. That's always been important, for me. I'm an actor who's Irish, not an Irish actor.

The best roles you have to fight for. You have to really want to do it and you have to go after it.

And, for any performer, to be able to go deep into character is fantastic. In film you only get to do that if you're the leading character. But in television you get 18 hours to really test the audience and take them to the edge of how far they will go with this character. I can step over this line and I love that.

Two weeks ago we couldn't pronounce your name, but you were in the lead in a film that made millions, so we're sending you all these scripts.

I think any actor that says 'I never watch my films' is a liar because you have to watch it at least once and also you're going to watch it when you're doing your ADR.

And once you're unafraid with death, I think your capacity for violence is immediately increased. Once you're unafraid of death, you are a very, very dangerous adversary

I loved The Fall; I was kind of obsessed with that show.