The fact in acting, you can tap into your darkest moments in life to your lightest moments. And people will watch it, and appreciate it, and even engage with you because of that. That's the greatest job one Earth.

I love acting. It's the one job I know of where you can go in, go through complete catharsis - emotionally, physically sometimes and mentally - and at the end of the day say, 'See you in the pub, guys.

When things are really painful, I turn it into comedy.

I don't like the way some actors, when playing a nasty character, will try to grab hold of something good about them.

I hate it when something is set in 1967 and every piece of furniture was made in 1967. No! If it's set in 1967, people have furniture given to them by their grandmother, which she bought in 1932!

If I'm at home on my own and the writing isn't going well, I clean my house. And there have been times in the past few years when my house has looked really clean.

The acting I got into by doing what we call pantomime, when I was sixteen. And, there were loads of very pretty girls in the show. I realized; I found out very early on, that the lead comic gets the girl. So, that was cool. When I went to university, I studied Economic Social History. And drama. That kind of got me into it. My main passion was to make films. It was never to be an actor. At that time, there weren't many opportunities for a working class Scottish actor. It was kind of an English thing. And it required a certain mannered cerebral acting style that I couldn't relate to.