Robert Carlyle Quotes

I never go anywhere without my iPod.

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.

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.

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

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.

The U.K. and the U.S. are very different countries, and it really shows in the television.

We met in Cracker. 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.

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

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.

Acting is probably the greatest therapy in the world. You can get a lot stuff out of you on the set so you don't have to take it home with you at night. It's the stuff between the lines, the empty space between those lines which is interesting.

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

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.

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

I'd work with Danny Boyle every day of the week. No matter what he was doing I would do that.

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

To be honest I don't think I was any great shakes as a theatre actor because everything I was doing was really small in size - intimate.

It's much more fun to be ugly.

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

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.

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

Most of the time, you find that the smaller the budget, the more the project is about something substantive.

I'd love to play some kind of fop.

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.

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

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.

I rant and rave about noise pollution.

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.

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.

If there's anything you want to ask your parents, ask them before they go, because once they go, they're gone.

I owe my father everything.

When I look back at it now, my past and the way I grew up, I grew up on communes.

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.

Every actor I think has got their own number of takes that they like, you know. Some actors like to go all day, you know on the one scene and some actors want to take two takes. I personally like four.

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.

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

I like to be working and moving - the worst thing you can do to me is stick me in a room all day while you're lighting a shot. That just kills me.

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

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

There are a lot of things that make up a performance, a lot of technical things. It isn't always just about pulling it up from the darkest recesses of your mind or your heart. It's your experience and your observation.

I just don't like the whole Hollywood thing.

Acting is a really insular thing.

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

The quality of TV drama nowadays is getting better and better. They've had to invent a new term for it: 'high-end television.'

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.

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.

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