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I was never a juvenile lead or a romantic hero, and I didn't come into my own as an actor until I was 40.

I played old men back in drama school. It's just now that I'm drawing level with the age of the characters I play, but I'm fine with that, and I've certainly never envied people who became hugely famous when they were young.

I came up around people who took acting seriously, who cared about acting, cared about the theater and, in the '70s, made movies that said something that mattered. I came up with those people, and I was a kid. Their ethos and credo became mine.

You know when you watch old movies, it's always the small parts you remember, the character actors who come in like a breath of fresh air.

There is some sadness for me now about acting because it used to be that there was a reverence for actors.

Not disown my past or upbringing, but I'd admired American actors, really American movie star - particularly the rebel heroes of the '50s.

I can remember when nobody believed an actor and didn't care what he believed.

I had given thought to acting, but I never really had a good enough opportunity or a character who made sense and paralleled my life a little bit. I feel like I'm one of the poster boys for a bad guy in a movie. I feel like I'm a good person to play a bad guy in a movie. I can say that.

Before 'Local Hero,' I'd been knocking about Glasgow in rock bands, drinking too much and generally being 21. My opinion of actors was that they were straight and boring, so you see, I was completely unprepared for being one.