Robert Carlyle Quotes

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

I rant and rave about noise pollution.

Acting, the arts in general, is a magnet for the wounded of society.

It's much more fun to be ugly.

I'd totally be attracted to a geek girl!

I owe my father everything.

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.

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

I've always believed that as an actor anything you're asked to do is within you. You just have to try and find it.

When I look back at my past and the way I grew up, I grew up on communes. That was meant to be.

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.

Hunger's a great spur.

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.

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.

I've never been good at accepting jobs six months down the line. I can't do it. If I'm thinking about this, I can't think about that. So I always seem to fly by the seat of my pants.

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

At times of the severest depression, humor is what binds people together.

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?

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

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

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

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

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

I never go anywhere without my iPod.

I hate the word 'hippy.'

Acting is a really insular thing.

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

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.

Bullying is a terrible, terrible thing.

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

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

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

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

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 darker the character, the more interesting.

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

My wife was a make-up artist, and she's a total product junkie. Our bathroom is packed full of lotions and potions so I end up trying them out.

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

So many of my friends, old friends I haven't seen in years, made their way out there and got lost, then found their way back. That seems believable to me.

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.

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.

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.

Early days, I was a bit racked , particularly when I did Hitler, for CBS . That was hellish. That stayed with me for quite a long time.

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

My understanding of zombie movies is people rising from the dead, from their graves, stuff like that, and walking very slowly.

I just don't like the whole Hollywood thing.

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

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

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