“For every successful actor or actress, there are countless numbers who don't make it. The name of the game is rejection. You go to an audition and you're told you're too tall or you're too Irish or your nose is not quite right. You're rejected for your education, you're rejected for this or that and it's really tough.”

“I have to make it my job to be careful with my family.”

“I do believe at the end of the night when you're with your family, the character gets hung up on the door like a coat, and is there to be taken on the next morning.”

“I certainly notice the vitality in Belfast, which wasn't there in the Seventies. There was a war going on then. Now there are cranes everywhere. There really is a sense of renewal and hope.”

“I had done some flimflam movies, but I didn't understand what being an actor meant anymore.”

“Before 'Schindler's List,' I wouldn't have believed movies had a lot of power for social change.”

“Some mornings you wake up and think, gee I look handsome today. Other days I think, what am I doing in the movies? I wanna go back to Ireland and drive a forklift.”

“Hollywood is throwing action movies at me.”

“Indeed I regard the enduring support which I have received over the years from all sections of the community in Ballymena as being more than sufficient recognition for any success which I may have achieved as an actor.”