As an actor, you're in the hands of producers and directors. It's important to find out who you're working with.
— Sean Bean
I think Daniel Craig is brilliant as Bond. I remember at the beginning, they were all saying, 'Oh, he won't work,' and I thought, 'Yeah, you watch.'
I don't think I've ever had a real desire to pick out any particular role - I just see what comes up.
If you're going to support a football team, do it 100 per cent.
I've been fortunate enough to travel the world because of my career, but the downside has been spending long spells apart from my daughters.
Football is a passionate game. It excites us.
My mother and father raised their eyebrows at first when I said I wanted to be an actor because I was in this industrial city. My dad had done a bit of boxing on the side, but he was a welder first and foremost. I was 17, and I said, 'I want to be an actor.' They worried it was a waste of time.
Anyone who says they are a hard man - they aren't.
I love doing just nothing in my free time.
Sometimes all you need is a big leap of faith.
I guess when we're young, we all have that fascination with flying.
Sharpe is my favorite role of all that I've played. He's a very complex character. He knows that he's a good soldier, but he will always have to fight the prejudice of aristocratic officers because of his rough working-class upbringing. On the battlefield, he's full of confidence - but off it, he is unsure, a bit shy and ill at ease.
I'm still Sean that me mates went to school with, not Sean the film star. And that's the way I prefer to be.
Listen to people and treat people as you find them. There's an inherent goodness in most people. Don't pre-judge people - that was me Mam's advice anyway.
A common misperception of me is... that I am a tough, rough northerner, which I suppose I am really. But I'm pretty mild-mannered most of the time. It's the parts that you play I guess. I don't mind it. I'm not a tough guy. I'd like to act as a fair, easy-going, kind man at some point.
If you have a very good concept of your character, you can snap into it.
I think everybody's got different methods of working which suit the particular individual. Mine is to sort of play the part, and give 100%, to concentrate and focus on it while I'm actually working, but then leave it behind until the next day.
I have gotten a couple of letters meant for Mr. Bean aka Rowan Atkinson. These letters would say things like, 'You're so funny, you make me laugh, with your big rubbery face,' and I would say, 'You can't mean me!'
I left school when I was 16; then I worked for my father, who was a welder. And I was a welder for three years, you know, welder of fabrication, metal 'cause it was a big industrial town, Sheffield. It was much steel and coal and stuff like that.
I think we have a perception of transvestites all being the same, as one block. It's not one mass or tribe. Everybody's got a different story.
I've been accused of being a bit too keen on my football, not least by my three ex-wives.
I spend a fair chunk of time in Los Angeles, and after about ten days of warmth and unbroken clear skies, you start to yearn for a bit of good old British gloom and rain!
I'd like to act as a fair, easy-going, kind man at some point.
George Martin looks like Santa Claus, but he's got a wonderfully disturbed mind.
I love to be with my kid in Yorkshire. I love it there.
Of course I believe in love despite four divorces. There is nobody who doesn't believe in love. But marriage - that fits some people but obviously not me.
There's something quite satisfying, quite reassuring about seeing a man having to survive.
I used to love wildlife as a kid and being outside in the garden and the woods and the field and that stuff.
There's a wealth of literature out there which, hopefully, will be, you know, exploded in the future, and I personally find it very rewarding to be involved with classic storytelling, and sort of legendary characters.
I sometimes find that playing the bad guy, or villains, or psychopaths tend to be much more psychologically rewarding. And you can really push it, you can push the limits, and get away with it.
006 was such an interesting character and the film really explored his friendship with Bond and how it all went wrong, so it was a very personal journey for both characters.
Lord of the Rings was something I always wanted to do. I read the book when I was about 25, and I was always hoping if it was ever made into a feature film that I would be involved in some way. And then I finally got it, and I was over the moon. It was fantastic news.
I'm proud of Lord of the Rings. I think it's a once in a lifetime role, and a once in a lifetime film. It was made with so much care and passion and meticulous detail and everybody was so behind it.
I sort of leave the character at the end of the day. I don't carry anything around with me - no excess baggage or unnecessary thoughts. I think it's too exhausting to do that. To put things into perspective - your work is your work, and your leisure time is something else.
I seem to be quite drawn to the medieval, magical fantasies, as it were.
I never try and play a bad guy to be bad and to be brutal and to be nasty and vicious, because I think you're going to be very cliche there. You know, you've got to find the truth in that character and what he believes in. It just happens that, you know, he's wrong.
It would probably surprise people to know that I'm interested in wildlife. I read a lot of poetry, too.
My days of being an absentee dad are well and truly over.
I miss a lot about England when I'm working away, even the slate grey skies.
You can't follow another actor's performance. You can't be Robert DeNiro, because you're not Robert DeNiro, and, you know, he is.
I like playing guys with swords and the horses and stuff like that.
Working in a garden calms me down.
For some reason, the parts I play, like Boromir or Ned Stark, have a life online long afterwards. I keep seeing - what do you call them - memes?
The thought of being in space, and kind of enclosed, I find would be very claustrophobic. I think I would panic in that situation.
It's strange coming back to Northern Ireland, but it feels like a home away from home.
My family thought the fascination with acting was just another fad.
I'd been trying for a while to get parts that weren't just the English bad guy, so it was quite refreshing to be playing someone who was a compassionate, decent guy.
I had no intention of being an actor. I was quite good at it. I was pretty capable at other things but never any good at anything.
Lord of the Rings was just so much enjoyment. It was over about the space of a year that I was filming. It's one of the most enjoyable things I've ever done, so emotional.
I think that you always have something left, that you take something of the character with you.
