Quotes from Denis Lawson

When I was very small, when I was five or six, that's what I wanted to be. I wanted to be a song and dance man. Then I got a lot of inspiration from going to visit my grandparents in Glasgow, where I'd go to see variety. That made me want to do it as well.

'Local Hero' was probably the most enjoyable job I've ever done then or since. It's had a very long shelf life.

Edinburgh is a phenomenal location for movies and should be used more.

When I was a young actor and working in London, I would pop home to see my sister, and Ewan would always be intrigued about what I'd been doing. I think he found my shoulder-length hair and pink, flared jeans glamorous, which they were anything but.

This is the best thing that happens to me all night - a pint of cold Guinness.

Laughter is like surfing; it's like a wave coming out of the auditorium - before it has died off, you must come in with the next line. But if you come in too soon, no one will hear what you say.

I think of myself as a light comedian.

Way back at the beginning, I went to see George Lucas when he first came to London for 'Star Wars.' I met him months before they started, and he didn't ask me to do the picture at all. But the actor whom he had employed to play Wedge didn't work out for some reason.

Scotland is extraordinary as a location, the light is amazing, for instance on the west coast.

I began to tell people that I wanted to be an entertainer. Between the ages of five and 11 there was an intense amount of practical drama going on.

I hadn't read Dickens for a while and doing 'Bleak House' was great.

I've always been interested in Jewish culture, but never had a chance to dip into it.

Doing comedy is my favorite thing.

For the first ten years of my career, or up to the point I did 'Local Hero,' I was always trying to be somebody else as an actor.

Ewan was auditioning to get into acting college and asked me for advice as he wasn't connecting with the piece he was learning. I told him to think about a time he'd been beaten up in Glasgow and how he felt when the guy had punched him for no reason. He then made the connection between emotion and the words he was saying, which is what acting is.

A big moment for me came when 'Singin' in the Rain' came out. It hit me like a sledgehammer - that's what I wanted to do.

My mother was a dancer when she was a kid and I gather she was very good, but was never allowed to go into the profession.

My family are all Glasgow. I was born there. Govan. When it was very tough. The tenements. All that stuff.

My parents came out of Glasgow during the Depression and both - particularly my father - had very tough childhoods. They fought their way out of it.

I rather like contemporary art.

I quite like Jackson Pollock, and have a real gut reaction to it, so it does whatever it does to me.

To make 800 people laugh for a couple of hours is a wonderful feeling, because you know you're doing them a lot of good.

Working on 'Jekyll' required a lot of concentration and energy. The script is written in a very filmic way most of the time; unusually for television there are a lot of descriptive pages, tiny little fragmented scenes with no dialogue but huge energy.

I had this idea when I left drama school that if I could do everything, I'd always be working.