We met in Cracker. 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.

I want to keep audiences off balance, so they don't know who I am or how to take me. If I duck and weave, as Frank Bruno might say, I'll have a longer shelf life.

Every actor I think has got their own number of takes that they like, you know. Some actors like to go all day, you know on the one scene and some actors want to take two takes. I personally like four.

It depends who the director is you know, I mean Ken Loach for instance. I've done up to 32 takes with him.

We met in Cracker. 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.

The darker the character, the more interesting.

Biologically, I'm lucky - an angular face and dark colouring which shows up well on camera.

I'm in four different films this year, and I have four different accents. I sound different in every film. You have to love a character to play it well, and change in my work is what I want.

The script will point you in certain directions and I go the opposite if I can. I try do do one thing and tell a different story with my eyes. I believe what's more interesting is always what's not being said.

Acting is probably the greatest therapy in the world. You can get a lot stuff out of you on the set so you don't have to take it home with you at night. It's the stuff between the lines, the empty space between those lines which is interesting.

A lot of Scots have settled in Canada over the years and it's a very easy place for Scots - they understand us, we understand them.

A lot of my work is with children and there's a reason for that, because they really level you.

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.

Anyone that knows me knows what I'm about, and I'm very much a British actor, a European actor.

Anyone who knows anything about me knows that I am a very patriotic guy, in terms of my Scottishness and my roots.

Each performance and each film is what it is. It's right and belongs within that moment. You look at it and try to make it fit your particular part of your character and your particular film.

Hunger's a great spur.

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

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

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

I hate the word 'hippy.'

I have a reputation for being an improvisational actor, which is true, but I also know what I'm doing so that if the improvisational strand doesn't work I can go back to what I know's already there.

I just don't like the whole Hollywood thing.

I like to be working and moving - the worst thing you can do to me is stick me in a room all day while you're lighting a shot. That just kills me.

I love sci-fi because it leads in the imagination, and I always say it has the most intelligent fans in the world.

I loved cinema while growing up and, for the longest time, wanted to be a director.

I never rehearse. Never! I think it's a waste of time.

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!'

I owe my father everything.

I rant and rave about noise pollution.

I think I have a natural, if I can say that, got a kind of natural ability in comedy.

I used to be a rabid reader, but now it's scripts or nothing - network television is quite relentless, and you can't drop the ball.

I was 16 when I was in a band, for about 10 minutes. I went off and did acting after that. So it was a wee moment for me when I sang.

I'd love to do a Columbo-type detective character in a series.

I'd totally be attracted to a geek girl!

I'd work with Danny Boyle every day of the week. No matter what he was doing I would do that.

I'm not someone who believes in wasting my vote.

I've really enjoyed my work in television, but the problem for me is the turnover of directors every week.

If there's anything you want to ask your parents, ask them before they go, because once they go, they're gone.

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.

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

It took a long time for me to accept I was an actor, a professional actor, and that, actually, I make a living out of this.

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

My first love is art, and I see a lot of things in an artistic way.

Of course, I love chats with various actors about the process and how they do it. To me, if it's not on the camera, if it's not there, it's not worth it. It really just isn't worth it.

People go to the movies to watch a film and all they're thinking about is the actress's cellulite they saw in a magazine.

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

The U.K. and the U.S. are very different countries, and it really shows in the television.

The first thing you should know about me is when I was three years old my mother left me and my father. And that was traumatic obviously for my father - he suffered a nervous breakdown at that time in his life.