As I flew back from New Zealand to bury my mother, it occurred to me that no matter how harrowing her loss was and how keenly it will always be felt, there was, nevertheless, a sense of relief that my father, sisters and I could say a final goodbye after the longest goodbye and relief that my mum had finally been released.
— James Nesbitt
What I discovered all over Ireland is that people living simple lives by the sea or in the remote countryside seem a lot calmer than city folk with their iPads and their Android phones.
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.
The reality of life in Northern Ireland is that if you were Protestant, you learned British history, and if you were Catholic, you learned Irish history in school.
Supporting drama for young people is close to my heart.
When I was growing up, Belfast City Hall was surrounded by security, and we had no access to it. But now, people come in and out of it all the time. On a nice day, office workers and students sit on the lawn outside and have lunch. It's great to see how Northern Ireland has changed. To be part of that is fantastic.
Kids at a certain age don't necessarily want to be dragged to the other side of the world.
Brain surgeons are dealing with the very last thread of life, and they have to be very confident, but I think they tend to remember their failures rather than their successes, and that must be very hard. Who do you share that failure with? That's why their personal lives are often disastrous.
Perhaps our imagination needs crime stories to fulfill some craving we have, as a way to assuage a darkness in ourselves.
Acting was a godsend. I found myself because I loved acting.
I love nothing more than going to eat by myself with a newspaper.
My wife would say I'm more Hyde than Jekyll!
I think teaching should be a vocation, and they should be paid more for it.
There's no such thing as unwanted attention for an actor.
My agent Sue realised after 'Cold Feet' that I could have spent the rest of my life doing similar roles. So she was instrumental in moving me away from that.
Ever since I left Northern Ireland, I've always been pretty comfortable on my own, which contradicts a lot of people's perceptions of me.
You can get a bit world-weary in this job, and 'The Passion' reminded me of what a fantastic job acting is and how lucky I am to be doing it.
People don't watch TV only to relate to stuff. They also watch to find out about a world they can't relate to.
I want to beat up Michael Fassbender in a movie. I was with him at the beginning of his career when he did an episode of 'Murphy's Law.' He's a proper superstar and enormously talented, but I want to do a scene where I properly duff him up.
All my adult life, there was the Troubles. That was the backdrop of my life.
No one wanted to own Bloody Sunday.
As fabulous as technology is, it can also make us very anxious.
Belfast is a city which, while not forgetting its past, is living comfortably with its present and looking forward to its future.
While I've never 'phoned in' a performance, I think I have given some performances where I could have been a bit braver.
I'm Ulster Presbyterian. We understand the need to work hard from an early age.
That thing of briefly losing sight of a child happened to me when the kids were younger, and you can't see them in the supermarket or wherever. It's a terrible, terrible moment... the most unimaginable horror.
When I turned 40, subconsciously, life was a blank sheet. Before, it was disjointed, and I was very displaced and quite mad, but it was a brilliant time. Everyone thinks I must have been unhappy.
Love your parents, but don't have them as your mates.
I have three older sisters who, when we were children, used to hold me down on a bad day and put make-up all over me, so I've had an aversion to it all my life and hate sitting down in the make-up chair.
Acting is something you didn't do in Ireland.
Although surgeons know how to deal with bits of the brain, they don't really know how it works.
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.
I'm no pin-up.
'Spoilt' is a euphemism for 'loved.'
New Zealand is a place where you can get well.
I went to India with UNICEF in connection with Manchester United to raise money for children's education.
Improvising political dialogue is not easy.
I loved my time growing up in Northern Ireland doing youth drama, that is where it all began for me.
Unification is less important than the fact Ireland is now conflict-free.
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.
Northern Ireland has treated me well, you know?
I'm an actor, learning lines and saying them in the right order.
My preference is for good writing. It doesn't matter if it's for film or TV. Whatever. It starts with the writing. Even though I've had problems with writers, it doesn't matter how great of an actor you are. If the writing is bad, you're going to struggle.
I've always been a family man and count myself as one of those who are lucky to have the comfort of a family.
Some actors can distance themselves from the parts they play, but I fall into the category who use bits of themselves.
I actually started out on the stage as a singer.
The best way of enjoying your money is to spend it on other people. I don't need much.
Tumours can come out of nowhere.
I've got a history in my life of difficult times.
If you are a Northern Irish actor, maybe subconsciously more than consciously, you do have an instinctive responsibility at some point to tackle the recent history of where we have come from. It's not only a responsibility, but a privilege.
