In the late '70s, maybe just before I started, there was still an attitude that if you did film you didn't do TV and vice versa, but that's gone now.

I've always taken my love of children from my father. He was a children magnet. Suddenly, having my first child hit home what my dad went through.

A lot of the characters I play have problems, they are marginalised, they have serious psychological problems, problems with relationships, with childhood. These are big subjects, big subjects. You can't balk at work like that. As an actor, that's as good as it gets.

I feel like I'm the luckiest man on the planet.

My dad was rubbish at all other aspects of his financial life, but he's pretty good at paying the rent.

I often have scripts sent to me with allegedly Scottish characters where I end up telling them, 'You're going to have to rethink this whole thing!

So many of my friends, old friends I haven't seen in years, made their way out there and got lost, then found their way back. That seems believable to me.