I don't feel ashamed of my wife's political background, and I don't think she should either. I feel that the people who administered the North of Ireland for the last 20 years should be ashamed. There you are.

People often refer to my career before The Crying Game as something which led up to that point. But I was very fulfilled in what I was doing.

That was the beginning of modern acting for me. You don't have to tell a camera everything. It gets bored if you do and wants to look elsewhere.

I've been worked over by the English press because there's an assumption that my politics are identical with my wife's, and for that matter that my wife's politics are identical with her politics of 20 years ago.

At least when you're acting you can be someone. In front of the camera you have to be yourself. And who am I?

I am afraid of death, scared by it. I already don't know whether I exist or not. So dying really terrifies me.

At this moment, when Ireland seems about to break into something new, we thought it was worth looking back at a time when people seemed to have found a way out of the sectarian division of the country.