I'm attracted to seeing how different I can be, pushing the boat out.

It's difficult to gauge that. With a bad guy you just know you're bad. To play a nice guy is harder - unless you are a very nice person like me of course.

It felt good doing a physical job, and going home each evening feeling like I had really done a day's work.

The reason I wanted to be an actor is that I don't want to play me for the rest of my life and make money out of that.

I talked to everyone about the project: actors and extras, members of the crew and passers by.

Now here I am playing a passionate young Irishman who would die for what he believes in.

I'm attracted to seeing how different I can be, pushing the boat out.

There is an odd sense of responsibility attached to appearing in a drama about a real piece of history. A work of fiction is fun.

There are lots of people I admire and respect, but I don't necessarily want to be like them. I'm to happy being myself.

I find it incredibly romantic that people should fight for a cause they believe in and be prepared to die for it.

Although this is a fictitious story the history is real. You don't want to re-write history but you certainly want to portray events and characters as realistically as you can.

I went further and further back through the centuries to get a sense of perspective but now at least I understand why Irish history evokes such strong passions and emotions.

I'm not really very ambitious.

It was only when I finished the course and left my graduation diploma on the bus that I realised I'd become an actor.

I don't have any expectations as an actor and being rich and famous is not my driving force.

Baddies always do get the best lines, that's the honest truth.

I'm more interested in enjoying my life and looking after my family than being hugely successful.

When I left school I went to Australia for a year and worked in the drama department of a school in Perth.

The good guy only gets the girl in a soppy way.

I don't have any expectations as an actor, and being rich and famous is not my driving force.

I'm not really very ambitious. I'm more interested in enjoying my life and looking after my family than being hugely successful.

There are lots of people I admire and respect, but I don't necessarily want to be like them. I'm too happy being myself.

I often imagine what it would be like if my father were still here to mark his 100th birthday, if Alzheimer's hadn't clawed away years, possibilities, hopes. What would he think of all the commemorations and celebrations?

The human being is a most curious creature. He thinks he has got one soul and he has got dozens.

When you lose someone whose life was so extraordinary like my dad's, you have two options: You can curl up in a dark corner... or rise above it and dust yourself off and continue with their work. He will always be with me.

In America, it is difficult to be your own man.

The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you've got it made.

I tried, after I wrote 'Twilight,' to read 'The Historian,' because it was the big thing that summer. But I can't read other people's vampires. If it's too close, I get upset; if it's too far away, I get upset. It just makes me very neurotic.

A firm, for instance, that does business in many countries of the world is driven to spend an enormous amount of time, labour, and money in providing for translation services.

Growing up, I was a little hippie kid. I went to some good concerts... Amnesty International with Bob Dylan and Tracy Chapman... The best concert I ever went to was this one at the Cow Palace my freshman year in college on New Year's Eve. It was Pearl Jam opening for Nirvana opening for Red Hot Chili Peppers.

We deserve quality jobs that pay a living wage, lower college tuition, action on climate change, and comprehensive immigration reform.

R.E.M.'s 'Automatic for the People' - that's probably one of my favourite records - Michael Jackson's 'Thriller' - that's some record - Crowded House's 'Together Alone' - that's brilliant, fantastic record.

Do you know I keep a picture of Hattie McDaniel in my closet in an 8-by-10 frame?

My hope is that light, flexible architecture might bring about a new and open society.

I graduated in '91, so the '90s for me were very much the first years out of school, so I can't really look at that decade as independent of my own experience of my 20s, really.

Times change. Cable news and the Internet alone have transformed the way outreach to the American people can be accomplished.

With a diplomat father, for whom foreign postings were a fact of life, my siblings and I were expected to attend boarding schools in Britain.

And it hurts as a player, that you put a lot of hard work in during the week, and at the end of the week, Sunday, when you get on the field, that's when they acknowledge about the hard work that you put in throughout the week. That's actually a disappointment.

What a director really does is set the emotional temperature and the mood and the level, amount, or lack of, distance between the action and the character, and the character and the audience.

My real guru are my experiences in life - the realisation that you are alone in this world came very early to me.

My action follows my characters. If a character is a cop, you cannot be posing all the time, you cannot fly off the roof because it doesn't make any sense - it's not practical.

There is a very large chunk of our population who firmly believe in extraterrestrials.

I grew up on the back of a motorcycle - my dad didn't have a car until I was a teenager.

It is better that ten guilty escape than one innocent suffer.

'Friends' will always remain friends.

One is not born a genius one becomes a genius.