Ian McShane

Acting is great therapy - you get to do things you'd normally get arrested for.

When you're in your early 20s, you go ahead and do everything. And it's very hard to judge yourself.

Theater is a dance of a different kind, a dance of rawness and characters stripped down.

I don't believe in the death penalty, but I understand personal vengeance.

I don't do social media.

'Lovejoy' has a special place in my heart because it was through my efforts that the series first came to the screen.

What's great about acting is you can let all your wackiness hang out while you work.

The bad boys get all the best lines.

Robert Fisk is my hero. In America, they think he's a terrorist.

My second marriage was to a girl I met in Manchester, kept a long-distance relationship going for two years, then we got married... disaster.

My daughter said, 'I don't think granddad really suits you.'

I would like to be in a really big, successful film - boffo, spectacular, $500 million!

As long as the cheques carry on coming in, and I'm enjoying my work, I shall continue acting.

I think the reason 'Sexy Beast' was so good was it wasn't just another run-of-the-mill gangster film; it was a love story.

People tweet before they think, and it becomes obsessive.

I'm from the disco era where everybody thought they were John Travolta... What song is going to get me on the dance floor? Anything from 'Saturday Night Fever,' and you're up there like a demon.

I enjoy every role I do.

Seventy years old! How did that happen? I was part of the generation that wasn't going to die.

What 'Deadwood' did was to talk about how capitalism started, how civilised society came in, and how that brought its own problems.

Mum and Dad were both happy for me to do what I wanted.

I don't want to be in 'Expendables 5.' You can keep those kind of movies.

If I'd had the choice when I was 14, and someone had said to me, 'You can either be a footballer or an actor,' I'd have said: 'Well, can't I be a footballing actor?'

When you've done a show that's as successful as 'Lovejoy' was, it hangs around for a few years, and people know you from it. I escaped the shadow when I stopped 'Lovejoy' by not doing any television for four years.

I don't think that acting is as youth-obsessed as the general culture. In acting, as you get older, you get better, and the parts you get improve, too. But that's only true for a man, not a woman.

Bosses will tell you they are looking for something different but they're not, actually.