Quotes from Denis Lawson

I always enjoy the scenes with Dennis Waterman, particularly when we're playing comedy, we're always finding stuff together and he's very immediate.

In my professional life, when I started I felt it was very transitory. You meet people, you have to make this very intense connection and then you might not see them for two years. It was kind of odd and when I started out I didn't like it.

I got married on a beach in Italy. It was very romantic getting married in Italian. But I've no idea what we agreed to.

Going from dialogue-driven 'New Tricks' to a movie like 'The Machine' which has special effects has been brilliant.

The way the show was conceived originally and developed, has always had good writing at the heart of it, it's very difficult to be good with bad writing. 'New Tricks' has that with the right level of humor running through the series, along with the investigations.

What's it like to have my trousers pulled down? It's not as awful as it seems. Doing that kind of thing with an actress like Judith Paris, who pulls them down, is easy, because she is very professional about it.

'Bleak House' is like the best soap you could ever hope to watch.

I studied in Glasgow and, when I was young, I spent four years solely in theatre.

My initial impulse was to be an entertainer, a song and dance man.

The first four years, I worked exclusively in the theater. I did a great deal of different types of acting - avant garde and classical work. So, it was a very broad spectrum.

I've always maintained that there's no such thing as period acting, I think that's a class thing. I don't believe that people moved and spoke much differently than we do now.

I've done a lot of musical theatre, but I equate 'Mr. Cinders' a lot with why I became an actor.

My first starring role was in 'Rumpelstiltskin' and the lightbulb moment for me came when I had to stamp my foot at the end and walk off the stage. Everyone laughed and I thought, 'this is great.'

I get so bored about that, please don't ask me about 'Star Wars.' It was just so unimportant to me as a job, and everyone makes a big deal of it.

I was approached by Disney to reprise my role but I wasn't interested. The movies are sure to be brilliant but I don't want to be in them. I've spent the past 20 years talking about the last movies and I'm bored with it. I don't want to spend the next 20 talking about 'Star Wars.'

I was very surprised when I watched 'Star Wars,' and I thought, 'Oh, that's me. I've been blown up.' Then, I came back again. I really didn't know what was happening!

I had a feeling 'Star Wars' might do well, but I didn't anticipate just how well.

In the '80s, to get a contemporary Scot who was smart, sexy and funny was very unusual.

It's unusual when you get scripts not wanting to change things - I'm one of those actors who writers must hate as I'm always wanting to rewrite or swap bits about.

In P7, I played Robin in a musical version of 'Robin Hood' and afterwards DO McLean was standing with mum and dad and he told them that I should go into drama. It is still extraordinary to me that a man in that period would think that that was an option for me.

I do some very high energy comedy, vaudeville, music hall stuff, and people who've seen my work on camera, on TV and movies, would not really know that.

Ewan was studying in London and he got this huge job in his final year, a part in Dennis Potter's 'Lipstick on Your Collar' for Channel 4. He had no idea what happened on a TV set so I talked him through things.

What I've always liked as an actor is to do a lot of different kinds of things. I've done musicals, stage, TV and lots of different styles of work.

I don't know how I ever built a career, really, because I have always been absolutely terrible at auditions.