Ciaran Hinds

For all the acting you can do, the actual soul of someone does somehow permeate through their work. ”

My soul is still Irish. ”

When I was young I read 'L'Etranger' by Camus, and it made me aware of the strangeness of life. ”

That's why Tennessee Williams was a great writer. Poetically, dramatically, it was fantastic stuff. And with the landscape, the losers in life populating it. His short stories have got rhythm, something musical about them. ”

My father was a GP; my mother was a teacher and amateur actress. My father was a bit of a storyteller, but the acting influence must have been from her - yes, put it down to my mother. ”

My feet always danced to Irish traditional music, but I was very glad to get out of the North of Ireland in the mid-Seventies when it was really closed and tight and relentlessly unforgiving. ”

In good comedy, the structure comes from truth and that weird eye that looks at the way life is. ”

I'd love to get into some comedy, but people keep saying, 'You're not funny!' And I say, 'Well, fair enough.' I have done comedy on stage. ”

I've worked a lot with Noah Baumbach, and he doesn't make it easy to like his characters, but the stories are funny and witty and there's an edge to that kind of humanity. ”

I do believe as human beings we are a great mass of contradictions. ”