When I started recording, I thought I'd be able to do all kinds of records: jazz, country, dance - and I've always wanted to do a gospel album.

You know they say that pregnant women glow and their hair's wonderful? Well I never got to that bit. I just remember feeling sick or actually puking up all the time.

A young man who isn't a socialist hasn't got a heart; an old man who is a socialist hasn't got a head.

I couldn't afford to go to drama school in London. Then I met with the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in Glasgow, and I fell in love with the city. It was one of the few schools that...

It doesn't help me to burn bridges, but I'm not going to sit back and be given blame when I don't deserve it.

I don't think there's any great mystery to writing female characters, so long as you talk to them. If you lived in a monastery and never met any women, maybe it would be difficult.

My disappointment with Christmas stems from my abject horror at losing the magic of Christmas when I was young. That's where it comes from. Because I'll never capture that Christmas joy and excitement...

I wake up with the story in my head, so I really like to be at my desk about five minutes after I wake up. So I don't get dressed. I put on a bathrobe, I make tea and sit at my desk.

We make our own pesto. Our own chutney and jams.

The biggest thing about me, as an actor, is I'm never a finished product, you know? I always want to try something or be in a new genre because, one, it's much more fun to do that because you're not...

I'm a sporadic reader. I have moments when I can't stop... then I kind of forget that I can read. But then I go, 'Oh God, yeah, books!'

I'd even refuse to go to school when I was at primary age, and if you look at any class photo with me in it I'm always the kid with his hand in front of his face, or turning away from the camera.

Everyone tells me to play as long as you can. Sometimes, it goes in one ear and out the other.

For me, 'Come and See' is, by a million miles, the best film about war that has ever been made. I would highly recommend, encourage and enforce anyone to watch it.

If you could bottle that special feeling you sometimes get in a dressing room just before a match, you'd be a billionaire.

Oh my goodness me, Daniel Day-Lewis - huge, huge fan of his. I've always loved his philosophy on acting: he always talks about returning to a state of play.

I've got a very peculiar sort of fame, based on being on the telly. It doesn't mean you have the lifestyle people expect.

Wherever I am in my life, it's because rugby has enabled me to do that.

There are a lot of famous comedians from Liverpool, then obviously the Beatles, and the football club. That's what people in Liverpool are passionate about.

When you cross the whitewash, you only think about the present.

You have to strike a balance between imprinting the film with your voice, and trusting these amazing, talented people you've hired to do great work.

Any strategy, policy call or future manifesto should not view a child's health through the narrow prism of what they eat, but put diet on an equal footing with mental health and physical activity.