Ciaran Hinds

“That's why Tennessee Williams was a great writer. Poetically, dramatically, it was fantastic stuff. And with the landscape, the losers in life populating it. His short stories have got rhythm, something musical about them.”

“I'd love to get into some comedy, but people keep saying, 'You're not funny!' And I say, 'Well, fair enough.' I have done comedy on stage.”

“When I was young I read 'L'Etranger' by Camus, and it made me aware of the strangeness of life.”

“I come from theatre and I always go back every couple of years.”

“You get to an age when you lose people close to you.”

“To be quite honest. I have seen a few things in 3D, and it didn't involve me anymore than when I saw something in 2D.”

“It's so tough to get movies made in Ireland anymore. A whole generation of Irish filmmakers doesn't have the resources to get a movie made.”

“I've never traveled to promote anything I've been in. I've only been to about two or three premieres. The way I work, I do bits, and then I'm off to something else, whether it's theater or another project.”

“I don't think I'm very fashionable. I drink a fair amount of Barry's Tea, from Cork - but might that be fashionable? I don't know.”

“I do believe as human beings we are a great mass of contradictions.”

“I don't use the word 'artists' lightly.”

“My feet always danced to Irish traditional music, but I was very glad to get out of the North of Ireland in the mid-Seventies when it was really closed and tight and relentlessly unforgiving.”

“Sometimes, there's not an honest engagement of Ireland in Hollywood movies.”

“When a play is really cooking, there's nothing like it.”

“Grief is exhausting. When you learn - maybe through my age or experience - trying to harness the energy, whatever it is, muted energy or a concentration to find yourself in a place? You try to use it for when it's really necessary and can arrive.”

“I'm not a comic person at all. It never reached me in the north of Ireland, in the '60s and '70s growing up. We used to get stupid comics like 'The Topper' and 'The Beezer,' things like that.”

“Casting is very, very important.”

“Stuntwork... once, I've really only done one thing, which is take a punch and transport myself into the air onto a mat.”

“I know I don't go looking for directors. I always wonder why they chose me.”

“My soul is still Irish.”