I've always believed that as an actor anything you're asked to do is within you. You just have to try and find it.

I don't take a great deal of interest in party politics. Social politics interests me a great deal more.

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 do tend to divide my childhood into darkness and light, and the first seven years were certainly the darkness.

I played a maniac fan who murders a policeman and she did my makeup. I thought anyone interested in me looking like that must have genuinely liked me.

In troubled times the last thing you want to do is to stick your money into a film. It's such a gamble.

People in Scotland appreciate homegrown talent, but it's getting harder and harder to get films made in Britain.