The medium is secondary to the stories.

Every Irish person of my generation and earlier, we were raised Catholic and we'd have to learn it in school, we'd to learn the catechism by rote.

I think audiences are a lot more intelligent than what we give them credit for and understand that an actor is playing a role and that doesn't mean he can't play different types of roles.

In terms of trying to improve as an actor, for me it's always important to return to the stage. After doing a piece of theater for a prolonged period, I can think I must have surely improved in some way as an actor - you must be fitter than you were prior to doing it. For me, theater is very, very important in keeping things fresh and dangerous.

Then, at age 20, I discovered theater sort of by accident. Quite quickly, theater became more important to me than music. I began to realize that maybe my talents as a musician were quite limited, or had a ceiling to them, whereas acting seemed to sort of stretch before me. I got very passionate about it very quickly.

I don't consider myself a shy person necessarily, but there's something about getting under the skin of a character and allowing you an abandon or a sense of courage that you would never have in your own life.

I think there's such a thing as a performance gene. If it's in your DNA it needs to come out. For me, it originally came out through music, then segued into acting and came out through there. I always needed to get up and perform.