Quotes

If you're doing a scene and you think you're doing it wrong, just swear in the middle of it and then the director can't use it. It's an arrogant way of doing it, but unfortunately it's the only way of self-protection. You have to be a bit anarchic sometimes.

When you are lying drunk at the airport you're Irish. When you win an Oscar you're British.

I don't think awards are good, I don't think you should pluck somebody out of a job that is so communal and give them an award and everybody else is kind of left behind. I don't like awards. [They create] a competition element that shouldn't be there in our job, it really shouldn't, because it's such a family affair.

Of all the films I've made, only three do I remember where I felt I'd moved forward as an actress: Cloudburst (2011), My Left Foot (1989) and The Field (1990).

[on her character in Casualty (1986)] Megan was the mother we all want, full of love and understanding. I'm none of that - I'm not a mother and never will be and I wasn't even a very good wife; I'm not even a good nurse to my father, now he's old and frail. I'm much more rebellious than Megan. I couldn't do her job ever. Just go down to the hospital and watch what they do for an eighth of the salary I earned pretending to be a nurse. It makes you blush. You break your heart with people being kicked in the teeth by life. I couldn't handle it. I'd be reduced to tears.