STEPHEN REA

People often refer to my career before The Crying Game as something which led up to that point. But I was very fulfilled in what I was doing.

I loved movies as a teenager and saw as much American cinema as I could, but I hated the English films of the early '60s and had absolutely no point of identification with them.

Angel was the first Irish feature film. Neil's first movie and my first movie.

You have to know who you are, if you don't you have nightmares.

The Butcher Boy is a very great novel indeed and a very important Irish novel. The ambiguity of that is, he's writing a book about an appalling situation and he does it in a hilarious way.

I don't feel ashamed of my wife's political background, and I don't think she should either. I feel that the people who administered the North of Ireland for the last 20 years should be ashamed. There you are.

I've been worked over by the English press because there's an assumption that my politics are identical with my wife's, and for that matter that my wife's politics are identical with her politics of 20 years ago.

I believe some people in this business suffer from fame because they behave in a famous fashion.

I am afraid of death, scared by it. I already don't know whether I exist or not. So dying really terrifies me.

I never watch TV. I know I'm missing so much, aren't I? I'm probably not. I can't stand popular TV. I've got too much to do to watch it. I know that sounds pretentious and pompous, but there you are.

I didn't want to be seen as just a guy on a list. I'm interested in good scripts, scripts that are about something, scripts that move your acting along.

My kids act all the time and it's exactly what I used to do.

If you're playing a lead, you're shaping the movie. When you're playing a supporting role, you've got only a moment to make it count.

The worst thing for an actor is a director that gets on your nerves and says things that actually confuse you.

You do small movies because the script is good and because you believe in the director. You don't care about the money. And when they disappear, it's a pity.

People ask me to smile for the camera, but somehow it always comes out gloomy.

I've never been in a bad play. There might have been bad productions and I might have been bad in them, but I've never been in a play that wasn't interesting or worthwhile doing on some level.

We didn't have a television, so I grew up with books. This isn't to suggest I'm an intellectual, but I do read a lot because part of acting is an exploration of literature.

I'm enjoying it, but I still don't know why I'm hooked on acting.

When you're playing the part of a saxophone or a trumpet player, both of which I have done, it would be nice to be able to play like John Coltrane, but you can't. Your job is to do something else. And I'm not sure what it is, but I don't think I'd be acting Niels Bohr any better if I went and studied physics for five years.

At least when you're acting you can be someone. In front of the camera you have to be yourself. And who am I?

I have never been to a brothel. I don't think I could go into one.

Acting is way of making yourself exist.

I think great art is always ambiguous and can't be pinned down.

I'm not in denial about technology, but my mother used to say when I was a kid, 'Son, you're handless,' because I couldn't fix anything. My ambition is to be a Luddite.