Top 35 Robert Carlyle Quotes

Hunger’s a great spur.

I rant and rave about noise pollution.

Most of the time, you find that the smaller the budget, the more the project is about something substantive.

I loved cinema while growing up and, for the longest time, wanted to be a director.

I often have scripts sent to me with allegedly Scottish characters where I end up telling them, ‘You’re going to have to rethink this whole thing!’

I like to be working and moving – the worst thing you can do to me is stick me in a room all day while you’re lighting a shot. That just kills me.

Of course, I love chats with various actors about the process and how they do it. To me, if it’s not on the camera, if it’s not there, it’s not worth it. It really just isn’t worth it.

I hate the word ‘hippy.’

Acting is probably the greatest therapy in the world. You can get a lot stuff out of you on the set so you don’t have to take it home with you at night. It’s the stuff between the lines, the empty space between those lines which is interesting.

The darker the character, the more interesting.

People go to the movies to watch a film and all they’re thinking about is the actress’s cellulite they saw in a magazine.

I’d love to play some kind of fop.

I feel like I’m the luckiest man on the planet.

The U.K. and the U.S. are very different countries, and it really shows in the television.

To pursue a career in Hollywood you have to have a personality bypass. Look at the top 20 stars in the world – there’s probably only two actors among them. Hollywood’s not about you as an actor. It’s about your currency, what you ‘bring to the table’. And I’ve never been one to jump through hoops for anyone.

People in Scotland appreciate homegrown talent, but it’s getting harder and harder to get films made in Britain.

Guys, particularly in the West, go to the gym and train for hours and hours to pick up something that is heavier than them. Why would you want to do that?

I don’t take a great deal of interest in party politics. Social politics interests me a great deal more.

Anyone that knows me knows what I’m about, and I’m very much a British actor, a European actor.

Biologically, I’m lucky – an angular face and dark colouring which shows up well on camera.

My first love is art, and I see a lot of things in an artistic way.

I was 16 when I was in a band, for about 10 minutes. I went off and did acting after that. So it was a wee moment for me when I sang.

My dad was rubbish at all other aspects of his financial life, but he’s pretty good at paying the rent.

I have a reputation for being an improvisational actor, which is true, but I also know what I’m doing so that if the improvisational strand doesn’t work I can go back to what I know’s already there.

Each performance and each film is what it is. It’s right and belongs within that moment. You look at it and try to make it fit your particular part of your character and your particular film.

I’m not someone who believes in wasting my vote.

I think I have a natural, if I can say that, got a kind of natural ability in comedy.

A lot of the characters I play have problems, they are marginalised, they have serious psychological problems, problems with relationships, with childhood. These are big subjects, big subjects. You can’t balk at work like that. As an actor, that’s as good as it gets.

I’m in four different films this year, and I have four different accents. I sound different in every film. You have to love a character to play it well, and change in my work is what I want.

I never rehearse. Never! I think it’s a waste of time.

I want to keep audiences off balance, so they don’t know who I am or how to take me. If I duck and weave, as Frank Bruno might say, I’ll have a longer shelf life.

Vancouver’s a very child friendly city, there’s… no doubt about that.

Bullying is a terrible, terrible thing.

Anyone who knows anything about me knows that I am a very patriotic guy, in terms of my Scottishness and my roots.

I’d love to do a Columbo-type detective character in a series.