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I actually started out on the stage as a singer.
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There's some irony in playing a journalist after some of the stuff that has been written about me, but it's a great profession, particularly investigative journalism.
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Brain surgery is a fairly aggressive process. There's a lot to get through. There's the beautiful, delicate shaving first, which is really lovely. There's a wonderful ceremony of putting all the covers on, so only the little bit you're operating on is revealed. But once they make the incision and tear the skin back, the drill comes out.
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It's a complicated relationship with the place one grows up in, particularly if it's Northern Ireland.
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When you see a tumour in the brain, it's an ugly looking thing. It's kind of black, grisly and messy. Or it can be white. To see it taken away is just amazing.
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There will only ever be 13 dwarves in 'The Hobbit' - and I was one of them. If I had my time again, would I do it? Yeah, I would.
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I was one of the many kids in Northern Ireland who grew up in the countryside and had an idyllic childhood well away from the Troubles.
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My nightmare is that I don't want to be OK.
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I'm not strong-willed enough or unkind enough... or maybe simply not wise enough to tell a journalist that a subject is out of bounds.
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I never forget that I'm extremely fortunate.
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I've never thought of myself as a classic leading man. I'm a character actor who happens to play leading roles. Come on, look at me. I'm really Desperate Dan.
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A lot of people of my Ulster Protestant background would have been very suspicious of the notion of a film about Bloody Sunday. Our fear would have been that it would be terribly anti-Britain and anti-soldiers: a piece of nationalist propaganda.
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Love your parents, but don't have them as your mates.
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While I've never 'phoned in' a performance, I think I have given some performances where I could have been a bit braver.
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We have to get behind the scientists and push for a dementia breakthrough. It could be that we fear dementia out of a sense of hopelessness, but there is hope, and it rests in the hands of our scientists.
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Producers get very jittery about things.
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I thought I was God's gift to mankind and the greatest Irishman since George Best.
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New Zealand is a place where you can get well.
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I've heard some duff Irish accents. The worst must be Mickey Rourke.
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I think teaching should be a vocation, and they should be paid more for it.