Jamie Dornan

“Everyone likes a bit of competition.”

“I didn't do particularly well with girls at school. I was very shy. I'm not saying that was the only reason I didn't do well with them, but I just didn't.”

“I want to keep an element of myself in every character I play. And maybe that's connected to finding something that you like in every character. Maybe they coincide.”

“Throughout Ireland, there's a brilliant community of filmmakers and actors, and I guess there was always a lure to do some work in the place where I come from.”

“I feel very tied to Ireland and the U.K. and that side of the world.”

“It's funny when you know you're playing two characters and you're aware of how you have to play each one into your performance of the other. You're constantly at the back of your mind thinking and it all gets a bit confusing.”

“Mass appreciation doesn't always equate to something good.”

“Every role is physical to a certain extent, but as a viewer, I don't respond well to actors doing more than they need to tell a story.”

“I've never read anything set in Belfast that doesn't involve the Troubles or something senseless over a flag.”

“I grew up in a very liberal place.”

“A doctor once told me I have abnormal levels of adrenaline in my system.”

“To play any character, you have to have a total understanding of why they do what they do.”

“I think people from Northern Ireland have some kind of unspoken general feeling of what it is to be around segregation. You have an awareness of it because you know how much grief it's caused.”

“I think sometimes actors are drawn to good television because you have more time to sell it, you have more time to shape a character, and to tell a story, and that's really appealing.”

“If you are a skinny, baby-faced teenager, the last thing you want to hear is that you're cute.”

“I'd been auditioning for parts for years. I never got any better at it. I'm crap at auditions. I know there are people who can walk into those rooms and make those lines sing on the page and get the job immediately. I wasn't one of them. I'm still not one of them.”

“'The Fall' changed my life - that's not an overstatement.”

“It's a strange environment, being hounded. The paparazzi are cretins.”

“I read a lot about serial killers.”

“There are so many ways to make a living that don't involve hiding in bushes opposite houses of 18-year-old girls with a camera in your hand.”