Robert Carlyle
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"Robert Carlyle, Order of the British Empire/OBE" is a Scottish actor. His film work includes Trainspotting (film)/Trainspotting (1996), The Full Monty (1997), The World Is Not Enough (1999), Angela's Ashes (film)/Angela's Ashes (1999), The 51st State (2001), and 28 Weeks Later (2007). He has been in the television shows Hamish Macbeth (TV series)/Hamish Macbeth, Stargate Universe, and Once Upon a Time (TV series)/Once Upon a Time. He won the BAFTA Award for BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role/Best Actor for The Full Monty and a Gemini Award for Stargate Universe.

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I feel with TV you're allowed more freedom. With television there's more time to create something through the episodes. The fact that you're working harder on the surface seems more difficult, but you get into a way of working where if you're not allowed to stop and breathe and think about it, you just go on instinctively, which is the way I prefer anyway. It becomes a more spontaneous thing.

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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.

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To be honest I've worked with a few American actors now and I was looking forward to that you know, coming up in my career thinking "Yeah I'd like to work with some Americans because they seem to be very, very comfortable with improvisation. But that has not been my experience at all. They have to have things absolutely set.

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We met in Cracker. I played a maniac fan who murders a policeman and she did my makeup. I thought anyone interested in me looking like that must have genuinely liked me.

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I must have been dreaming about Albie. I spoke in a Liverpool accent all the time. It becomes second nature. It's much easier like that. It seems to me common sense rather than extraordinary.

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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.

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I'll spare you the actors' pretentious rubbish, but a face reflects experience, so if you concentrate on a character something happens to you physically. Many actors look at the costume before the part, and that seems crazy to me. It's much more fun to be ugly. Not that I think I'm ugly, but I've never considered myself good-looking.

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The way a person moves tells you a lot about them. Look at the way I'm holding this coffee mug. If I were to thump it down on the table, I wouldn't be respecting your tape recorder. If I move it gently, it means I am showing some respect. These are the things I bring to my performances.

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A lot of the characters I play come from the working-class. It's a background I'm familiar with. It's not about being hard. It's just knowing how that society works and what the rules are.I grew up in a working-class area of Glasgow and that experience has stood me in good stead.

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