A biography for Robert Carlylehasn’t been written yet.
“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.”
“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.”
“Of course, I love chats with various actors about the process and how they do it. To me, if it's not on the camera, if it's not there, it's not worth it. It really just isn't worth it.”
“My dad was rubbish at all other aspects of his financial life, but he's pretty good at paying the rent.”
“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.”
“To pursue a career in Hollywood you have to have a personality bypass. Look at the top 20 stars in the world - there's probably only two actors among them. Hollywood's not about you as an actor. It's about your currency, what you 'bring to the table'. And I've never been one to jump through hoops for anyone.”
“I owe my father everything.”
“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.”
“I think I have a natural, if I can say that, got a kind of natural ability in comedy.”
“Most of the time, you find that the smaller the budget, the more the project is about something substantive.”
“I never go anywhere without my iPod.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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'd love to play some kind of fop.”
“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 feel like I'm the luckiest man on the planet.”
“I'm not someone who believes in wasting my vote.”
“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!'”
“Acting is a really insular thing.”