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" I had a good job as a printer in the East End. Before the unions destroyed it, that job was very lucrative. "

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" I was brought up in a house full of women; the first time I realised no one was interrupting me was when I was on stage - that's probably the subconscious reason I became an actor. "

" My idea is just to do something different each time; the next thing I do has to be completely different to the thing I've done before - that's what I try and do, because you know, I'm an actor, not a film star. "

" The hardest thing to do and most miserable films are comedies. "

The Hardest Thing

" It's a very fascinating thing for an actor to play somebody who is suffering, and you have to express the suffering, but in an inarticulate way and sometimes a dysfunctional way, through violence. "

" I love Bethnal Green and where I'm from. Nothing there, especially the people, ever held me back, but I never felt that I was successful there. "

" I've got four kids to feed and a wife to provide for. It's a worry but a great responsibility as well and one I relish. "

" As children, we all hold on to the myth of omnipotence. Comics are successful because kids identify with superheroes. They'll read a book or watch a TV programme and say, 'I'm that guy.' And that guy is always the one in control. "

" I don't look like Brad Pitt or Tom Cruise. When you put me on the screen, the women don't want to make love to me, and the men don't want to be me. "

" I'd love to play a Bond villain. Yeah, I'd love to play a Bond villain. Everyone always says this to me; they always say, 'You've got to be a Bond villain', 'We're going to make you a Bond villain...' But they've never, ever approached me, I've never had a whiff of it. I think I'd love to play a Bond villain; I'd have great fun. "

" If you leave me waiting 'round for hours and then call on me to do something, I need to be able to do it straight away. That's my job, like your job is to do what you do. "

" My business is not to show anybody anything; my job is just to do it. "

" I used to do a lot of comedy. I don't know what happened. I think it's my face. "

" I have my career and my family, and that's it. "

" I'm not one of these actors who can make a bad script good. Some actors, a script can be terrible, and they can bring something to it and make it really special. I can't. "

" I knew what kind of actor I was going to be, and I looked for inspiration to people like Alec Guinness, Cyril Cusack, Timothy Spall and Jim Broadbent. I looked at them and thought, 'They play human beings as they really are.' "

" I listen to a lot of jazz. I'm a big Sinatra geek. I love Chet Baker. "

" I wasn't that hard. I wasn't that tough. I wasn't that funny - I looked like me. "

" I've got four kids - I unblock a toilet every day. "

" I have friends who are leading men, and they're only ever allowed to play leading men of a certain type. But as a character actor, there's a wider variety of projects available. On the big Hollywood films, all they care about is having their lead in place, so it's actually easier for someone like me to slip in. And I'm happy to do so. "

" I get a lot of people saying to me, 'Oh, you're the actor who plays the nutters,' and I'm not. I'm the guy who plays human beings. I understand why the characters are doing what they're doing. When you play a villain, you don't play a villain: you play a human being doing what he thinks he needs to do to get what he wants. "

" I was approached to do something for seven years, and it was a quality project. I did seriously think about it, but I didn't want to be away for six months of the year. I've never done the L.A. thing where you go and have loads of meetings; I can't say to my wife, 'I'm going to wait by a pool for six months.' "

" I want to be respected as an actor. There's my ego. But I don't have a great need to be liked by an audience. "

" When I first started doing press, one of the things people started pushing was this idea that I'd somehow escaped something. And I was really offended, because I hadn't escaped anything. "

" I knew very early on that I wasn't Brad Pitt. "

" Different races never fazed me because coming from Bethnal Green, I'd been around people of different races forever. Different class? That was much harder. "

" If your character doesn't express himself or doesn't feel confident expressing himself, then you don't express yourself. "

" I come from a place where there's violence and inarticulacy. I worked in a pub from the age of 12 or 13. I used to see people smashing glasses over each other. I was never tough. I was scared of them. "

" I consciously decided not to be a 'London' actor. Those gangster movies made a lot of East End actors think they were movie stars. And I was very aware that they were going to go out of fashion. "

" In my family, there was no celebration of ignorance. They'd come and see Chekhov or Shakespeare. I've got a sister who got a first in her degree. We don't sit around watching TV all the time. "

" The characters in 'Ray Donovan' are not very articulate - we're the worst Irish family you could ever live next to in L.A. "