Top 66 James Nesbitt Quotes

When I was at drama school, I was totally broke, and a lot of my mates had jobs and were financially very good to me, so if, for example, I take them away on a trip to a football match in Europe, it means that I can pay them back a bit.

Acting was a godsend. I found myself because I loved acting.

I love nothing more than going to eat by myself with a newspaper.

I think a lot of us who grew up in Northern Ireland weren’t politicised enough, frankly.

When I did the film ‘Hear My Voice’ a few years ago, I disappeared fully up my own backside for a while. Because I thought my career was taking off, I became a bit of an egomaniac and a pain in the neck. I thought I was God’s gift to mankind and the greatest Irishman since George Best.

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.

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.

I loved my time growing up in Northern Ireland doing youth drama, that is where it all began for me.

I never forget that I’m extremely fortunate.

Something about theatre perhaps scared me.

My mother taught me what it is to have a sense of humour; my dad, who was a headmaster, everything you need to know about hard work. My dad is the most decent man you could come across.

Theatres, along with the likes of the Ulster Orchestra, for example, are the cultural heartbeats of our towns and cities, and without them, we are much poorer for it.

Actually, I played Pontius Pilate as nice. An actor spends his life thinking he is Christ, and then he gets to play the character that killed him.

I feel old and vulnerable. I now realise that I knew nothing and know nothing, but back when my career was beginning, I thought I was a man when, in fact, I was a dewy-eyed boy who’d not seen an avocado or eaten a tomato.

When I went to university, I was already working professionally with the Ulster Actors.

I do commercials, but I also go to Sudan as an ambassador for UNICEF.

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.

I started a French degree at university, but packed it in when I realised I really wanted to be an actor.

People love watching medical dramas – they also love watching documentaries about the workings of the brain.

Like the character I played in ‘Jekyll’, we all have different masks we put on for different occasions. As much as we all want to lead decent lives, we’re also attracted by the idea that something dark may lurk within us.

All my adult life, there was the Troubles. That was the backdrop of my life.

Northern Ireland has treated me well, you know?

Funnily enough, Northern Ireland is a great example of where politics can win over conflict. The decision to down arms and follow a political path would have been unthinkable once. It shows just what is possible.

My wife would say I’m more Hyde than Jekyll!

When people say, ‘You’re perceived as a sex symbol,’ I love the idea of that because it’s so absurd.

If you are going to tell a story about a child going missing, it’s going to have similarities with a real life child going missing.

Perhaps our imagination needs crime stories to fulfill some craving we have, as a way to assuage a darkness in ourselves.

I’m not an actor who is often asked to be in period things.

While I’ve never ‘phoned in’ a performance, I think I have given some performances where I could have been a bit braver.

Perhaps not being very self-aware in the past masked depression. I think I was confused. I think I was immature. I think I probably was quite depressed.

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.

My wife is a very strong woman.

I’d be a very easy therapist’s subject.

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 actually started out on the stage as a singer.

I think often there is great rivalry between neurosurgeons and cardiac surgeons. I think I maybe have a bit of bias with neurosurgeons’ opinion that nothing tops neurosurgery! But that makes for a quite interesting conflict between the two.

I think teaching should be a vocation, and they should be paid more for it.

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.

I thought I was God’s gift to mankind and the greatest Irishman since George Best.

I’m an actor, learning lines and saying them in the right order.

I spend an awful lot of time by myself and enjoy that.

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.

When you’re brought up in a Unionist culture, you can’t help but feel Unionist.

Love your parents, but don’t have them as your mates.

No one wanted to own Bloody Sunday.

Because I grew up with women, I have a certain amount of charm, and I’m all right to get on with, kind enough, funny enough, blah blah blah.

I don’t think I’ll be doing a lot more commercials.

My best friends are still the ones I first attached myself to when I went to school because, all of a sudden, I was leaving the rather pampered and occasionally very annoying world of having three older sisters to go to a male-dominated world.

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.

Kids at a certain age don’t necessarily want to be dragged to the other side of the world.

Unification is less important than the fact Ireland is now conflict-free.

My mother certainly doesn’t think I’m charming!

I’ve got a history in my life of difficult times.

If I get to the end of my life, and people say, ‘He was in ‘Cold Feet,’ well, I was, and it was great. I thought the fourth series wasn’t great. I thought there were weak episodes throughout. Overall, I thought it was a good show, it had an impact, it dealt with a lot of issues, and it was a great part.

There’s no such thing as unwanted attention for an actor.

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.

There will only ever be 13 dwarves in ‘The Hobbit’ – and I was one of them. If I had my time again, would I do it? Yeah, I would.

It’s easy to get carried away with yourself.

Although surgeons know how to deal with bits of the brain, they don’t really know how it works.

‘Spoilt’ is a euphemism for ‘loved.’

There’s some irony in playing a journalist after some of the stuff that has been written about me, but it’s a great profession, particularly investigative journalism.

Tumours can come out of nowhere.

I’ve never felt that acting was my vocation – never had that tortured thing. I love acting, but it doesn’t feed my soul.

Supporting drama for young people is close to my heart.

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.

In my life, I have made the occasional catastrophic choice, and it’s just a case of moving on and learning from it.