Quotes from Robert Carlyle

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.

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

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

Acting is a really insular thing.

I never go anywhere without my iPod.

I think you should only wear jewellery if it has a story behind it.

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.

I've always taken my love of children from my father. He was a children magnet. Suddenly, having my first child hit home what my dad went through.

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

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.

Guys, particularly in the West, go to the gym and train for hours and hours to pick up something that is heavier than them. Why would you want to do that?

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

The thing I miss the most about Scotland is the football.

The more people know about an actor the less convincing they become. A bit of mystery's a good thing.

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

Hunger's a great spur.

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

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

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.

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.

Vancouver's a very child friendly city, there's... no doubt about that.

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.

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.

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.