I suppose that anyone who does any kind of creative work some time in their life - especially as you grow into middle age! - you come to a time where you really question more and more frequently, whether you have anything else to offer. And at its worst, you feel utterly bereft of whatever creative force it takes to do that work.

How people are around a director, it really does affect everything, every detail of the life of the movie.

I can't re-examine work I did in the past with pride.

When I did make the decision to focus on acting, I think my mother was just relieved for me that I had finally started to focus.

Ireland was a place for the renewal of hope and I still see it like that.

The one thing that I appear to have been given, bearing in mind that I am capable of being very, very scatty and extremely lazy, is the ability to concentrate on something I choose to give my time to.

I come from not just a household but a country where the finesse of language, well-balanced sentence, structure, syntax, these things are driven into us, and my parents, bless them, are great custodians of the English language.