Robert Carlyle Quotes

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

It took a long time for me to accept I was an actor, a professional actor, and that, actually, I make a living out of this.

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

I'd totally be attracted to a geek girl!

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

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

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'd love to do a Columbo-type detective character in a series.

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

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.

Hunger's a great spur.

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

The darker the character, the more interesting.

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?

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

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 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 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.

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.

I rant and rave about noise pollution.

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.

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.

I'd love to play some kind of fop.

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.

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

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 just don't like the whole Hollywood thing.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

I'm not someone who believes in wasting my vote.

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.

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

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.

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 never go anywhere without my iPod.

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

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

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

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

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.

I hate the word 'hippy.'