Quotes from Peter Mullan

If you are the kind of guy who draws in 100 million people to see his film, you've got every right to be paid accordingly, but I qualify as a character actor. I don't put a bum on a seat.

Life is much weirder than fiction; nothing's more absurd.

I hate it when something is set in 1967 and every piece of furniture was made in 1967. No! If it's set in 1967, people have furniture given to them by their grandmother, which she bought in 1932!

Most actors I know come from a screwed up background, so it makes sense that if you can walk on to a space and recreate your reality, then that's the place that will become very dear.

Every film I've ever worked on, and that includes 'Braveheart' and 'Trainspotting,' I've always witnessed a director having a breakdown. Every director will have a day, without exception, where they just can't do it anymore, they don't know what to say to their cameraman, their cast. It's the sign of real, physical exhaustion.

In the acting game, you spend a long time fighting against what the director perceives you to be. And half the time the directors don't know.

The working-class aspirations are worse now than when I was a kid - and it was pretty bad when I was a kid. Reality TV means they are being told they are no longer a working class, they're an underclass. Young lassies want to be Jordan or Jade, but very few aspire to be the next Germaine Greer.

A script is utterly useless in and of itself; it's only of any worth the minute your actors, your designers, your directors come into being.

You have to just go with your imagination, where your instinct takes you.

As a dad I'm emotionally dedicated but I'm not 'figuring out their life plans'. But of course as I'm telling them about the rights of wrongs I'm thinking back to what I was like at their age.

Truth is I don't think God on a daily basis. I think politics, science.

Watching people just look out for themselves, I think, is extremely interesting. It goes right back to something like 'The Beggar's Opera' - the underbelly of society, how it operates, and how that reflects their so-called betters.

There's a part of bohemia I love. The lack of prejudice, the lack of aggression, I love the lack, for the most part, of competitiveness. It's more peaceful.

No hard guy's not scared when another hard guy's knife is coming at you. You're scared, obviously, but you've to act less scared than he is. It's who is going to act less scared.

Filmmaking is something I have to do. It's not something I particularly want to do.

It takes a very strong brain to resist the absolutes, the myths that the media and the politicians peddle - the idea that if you are too kind, where does it all end? That not to help someone is somehow a good idea.

I don't like the way some actors, when playing a nasty character, will try to grab hold of something good about them.

Sometimes you have to confront your demons and sometimes even let them loose to genuinely find a place where you can gain some understanding.

I'm not a career filmmaker. I just like to do things that I still kind of believe in and because of that you just never know what's going to happen next. It doesn't matter if it's been a good year or a bad year: next year, there's no telling what it will be like.

There's no such thing as an actor giving positive criticism to a director. The minute you say 'Don't you think it would look nicer...', that director's going to hate your guts. Particularly if it's a good idea.

I wanted to dismantle the bollocks that there's a military structure to a gang, with a leader, second leader, the good looking one, first babe, second babe. It's far more arbitrary than that and their values shouldn't be romanticised. They aren't something you want to sign up to.

I was on the set of 'Braveheart' and my mate says to me, 'Do you think this film will be any good?' And I really meant this, too, I told him 'Let me put it this way - It won't win any awards.' Cut to: five Oscars.

The Vatican is like a huge kind of magician's club. The more you look into it the more awful it becomes. And they're laughing at us. That's when I get angry.

The Vatican has tried to condemn 'The Magdalene Sisters' as a pack of lies and that I've made it all up - I wish I was that good a dramatist - and in terms of public relations, that was the daftest thing they ever did.