Ciaran Hinds quotes:

My feet always danced to Irish traditional music, but I was very glad to get out of the North of Ireland in the mid-Seventies when it was really closed and tight and relentlessly unforgiving.

I don't think I'm very fashionable. I drink a fair amount of Barry's Tea, from Cork - but might that be fashionable? I don't know.

That's why Tennessee Williams was a great writer. Poetically, dramatically, it was fantastic stuff. And with the landscape, the losers in life populating it. His short stories have got rhythm, something musical about them.

I'm looking forward to locking swords with Douglas Henshall and working against the stunning backdrop of Shetland. I came to Scotland a lot in the 70s and 80s in various theatre productions and of course to film Hallam Foe but this is the furthest I've ever been.

Christianity has its own superstition, anyway: Why you turn three times, what this saint means, why you pray to the patron saint of lost causes, why you go this way or that way.

You know, Christianity has its own superstition anyway: Why you turn three times, what this saint means, why you pray to the patron saint of lost causes, why you go this way or that way.

Sometimes, there's not an honest engagement of Ireland in Hollywood movies.

I'd love to get into some comedy, but people keep saying, 'You're not funny!' And I say, 'Well, fair enough.' I have done comedy on stage.

My father was a GP; my mother was a teacher and amateur actress. My father was a bit of a storyteller, but the acting influence must have been from her - yes, put it down to my mother.

Grief is exhausting. When you learn - maybe through my age or experience - trying to harness the energy, whatever it is, muted energy or a concentration to find yourself in a place? You try to use it for when it's really necessary and can arrive.

When you find somebody who doesn't give and take, you go, 'Remind me never to work with you again.'

I'm not a comic person at all. It never reached me in the north of Ireland, in the '60s and '70s growing up. We used to get stupid comics like 'The Topper' and 'The Beezer,' things like that.

The joy of just being involved in something, of being part of a big process, just as a human being, it's nice to be part of people who are in the same enterprise, heading for the same goal, rather than, 'Oh this is all about me and my role. The story's about me.'

I've worked a lot with Noah Baumbach, and he doesn't make it easy to like his characters, but the stories are funny and witty and there's an edge to that kind of humanity.

You get to an age when you lose people close to you.

I know I don't go looking for directors.

Casting is very, very important.

I do believe as human beings we are a great mass of contradictions.

In good comedy, the structure comes from truth and that weird eye that looks at the way life is.

You try to work with the director and your fellow actors to get somewhere, but other people are the judge of whether you hit that note right.

I'd never really been in a series, where you see a man at different points and perspectives in his life. Usually it's a film, where I'm playing a character who just comes in and offers something up.

I float from one project to another project, so you miss people and you don't see them for years.

If you're venturing into territory that is slightly operatic, it all has to be done so carefully.

When I was young I read 'L'Etranger' by Camus, and it made me aware of the strangeness of life.

Stuntwork... once, I've really only done one thing, which is take a punch and transport myself into the air onto a mat.

For all the acting you can do, the actual soul of someone does somehow permeate through their work.

I'm not a comic person at all.

There has to be a reason of whether you look right or you bring the emotional or intellectual baggage of what's required for the storytelling. For me, it's not something I've aspired to say, "I'm going to be working in Hollywood."

In fact, most of the work that I have done for the American Hollywood things have not been in Hollywood. The studios are going out in Europe or around the place working.

Then you realize that the preparation and the planning of this small army of people trying to head to the single aim of creating a work that's going to excite people is very risky. Of course, the odds are that it's not going to work out because there are too many possibilities of it going wrong.

I don't use the word 'artists' lightly.

The freedom to make my own mistakes is all I've ever wanted

I quite enjoy more teamwork and offering something up into the mix.

Conflict sometimes produces results, but more often than not it produces confusion at the level of everybody on the same track.