I'm enjoying [my career]. If anything I'm aware that the pressure of the first, I suppose, six or seven years I was in America - I mean that energy of having such a rapid and ascending celebrity - it's not there anymore. It's the end of that chapter and now I'm just enjoying the work probably more than I ever have and yet I'm simultaneously less attached to it I think, which is kind of a strange state of grace to be in.

My Dublin wasn't the Dublin of sing-songs, traditional music, sense of history and place and community.

I have a piano in my living room that I mess around on a little bit and when I asked Len if I could find a piece of music, I went through a **** load of classical music to find something that I felt had a certain urgency to it, but also with a hint of melancholia and maybe a sense of longing. I found that which is public domain and I had a piano teacher to go through it with me.

Yeah, I know my way around some guns, which is weird because I have no time for them. I don't like them at all but I can take apart guns and put them back together and stuff, so I didn't have to go to the range. I don't think I will ever to go 'the range' again! I've done enough of that.

Pain seems to be easier, or melancholy seems to be easier to portray in a character. I don't know if that's because I'm a human being or because I'm an Irishman or both.

On "[Total] Recall" also [sets were extraordinary], but this was next-level. They built two or three blocks of midtown Manhattan in 1926 and it was inhabited with 400 extras and 24 Model Ts and a train system and all that kind of nonsense. It was madness. You would walk into shops and they would have the goods from that period, it was just huge.

I never think I'm capable of any of [action movies]! I'm always terrified, but luckily on this one it was directed by my husband [Len Wiseman]. 'I can't possibly do it. I'm too scared, I can't do it.' He says: 'Go on. DO it!' So it is shocking as I'm not one of those people who finds that stuff easy.