Top 100 James Nesbitt Quotes
#1. Love your parents, but don't have them as your mates.
James Nesbitt
#2. Perhaps not being very self-aware in the past masked depression. I think I was confused. I think I was immature. I think I probably was quite depressed.
James Nesbitt
#3. Supporting drama for young people is close to my heart.
James Nesbitt
#4. What I discovered all over Ireland is that people living simple lives by the sea or in the remote countryside seem a lot calmer than city folk with their iPads and their Android phones.
James Nesbitt
#5. My mother taught me what it is to have a sense of humour; my dad, who was a headmaster, everything you need to know about hard work. My dad is the most decent man you could come across.
James Nesbitt
#7. It's hard to make a film in Britain. It's hard to raise money. The best stuff that is shot on film in Britain is usually shot on film for television.
James Nesbitt
#8. I feel old and vulnerable. I now realise that I knew nothing and know nothing, but back when my career was beginning, I thought I was a man when, in fact, I was a dewy-eyed boy who'd not seen an avocado or eaten a tomato.
James Nesbitt
#9. Northern Ireland has treated me well, you know?
James Nesbitt
#10. I think often there is great rivalry between neurosurgeons and cardiac surgeons. I think I maybe have a bit of bias with neurosurgeons' opinion that nothing tops neurosurgery! But that makes for a quite interesting conflict between the two.
James Nesbitt
#11. Belfast is a city which, while not forgetting its past, is living comfortably with its present and looking forward to its future.
James Nesbitt
#12. I'm increasingly realising our consciousness and subconsciousness are extremely different, and our subconsciousness motivates us, but so far, I don't know what drove or motivates me.
James Nesbitt
#13. I thought I was God's gift to mankind and the greatest Irishman since George Best.
James Nesbitt
#15. I've never thought of myself as a classic leading man. I'm a character actor who happens to play leading roles. Come on, look at me. I'm really Desperate Dan.
James Nesbitt
#17. I grew up loving women and without misogyny, rancour or prejudice, totally loved and loving. And no matter what has happened since, I don't think I have treated women in my life very badly.
James Nesbitt
#18. When people say, 'You're perceived as a sex symbol,' I love the idea of that because it's so absurd.
James Nesbitt
#19. I spend my money on holidays and eating out, and it allows me to be generous.
James Nesbitt
#20. I actually started out on the stage as a singer.
James Nesbitt
#21. We have to get behind the scientists and push for a dementia breakthrough. It could be that we fear dementia out of a sense of hopelessness, but there is hope, and it rests in the hands of our scientists.
James Nesbitt
#22. I didn't much like Las Vegas. The noise of the place and the whole 24-hour, 'let's play the slot machines all night' culture of the place just left me cold.
James Nesbitt
#23. When you're brought up in a Unionist culture, you can't help but feel Unionist.
James Nesbitt
#24. The best way of enjoying your money is to spend it on other people. I don't need much.
James Nesbitt
#25. I've got a history in my life of difficult times.
James Nesbitt
#26. Some actors can distance themselves from the parts they play, but I fall into the category who use bits of themselves.
James Nesbitt
#27. The thing to remember is that the work comes first, and not to get distracted by anything else. If you keep focused on the work, everything else will fall into place. That's my mantra now.
James Nesbitt
#29. Like the character I played in 'Jekyll', we all have different masks we put on for different occasions. As much as we all want to lead decent lives, we're also attracted by the idea that something dark may lurk within us.
James Nesbitt
#30. I've heard some duff Irish accents. The worst must be Mickey Rourke.
James Nesbitt
#31. I do commercials, but I also go to Sudan as an ambassador for UNICEF.
James Nesbitt
#32. When you suddenly become successful, the change is enormous, both financially and in terms of recognition and the way people treat you. I found that hard to deal with. I got very guilty about it, and I think I put up obstacles to prevent myself enjoying it.
James Nesbitt
#34. New Zealand is a place where you can get well.
James Nesbitt
#35. The whole process of making 'Bloody Sunday' was difficult but extraordinary.
James Nesbitt
#36. Although surgeons know how to deal with bits of the brain, they don't really know how it works.
James Nesbitt
#37. My agent Sue realised after 'Cold Feet' that I could have spent the rest of my life doing similar roles. So she was instrumental in moving me away from that.
James Nesbitt
#38. I don't know a single person who doesn't regret the things that they did to hurt their parents, or the things they didn't say to them.
James Nesbitt
#39. Because I grew up with women, I have a certain amount of charm, and I'm all right to get on with, kind enough, funny enough, blah blah blah.
James Nesbitt
#40. As fabulous as technology is, it can also make us very anxious.
James Nesbitt
#41. I'm not strong-willed enough or unkind enough ... or maybe simply not wise enough to tell a journalist that a subject is out of bounds.
James Nesbitt
#43. I think a lot of us who grew up in Northern Ireland weren't politicised enough, frankly.
James Nesbitt
#44. I'm Ulster Presbyterian. We understand the need to work hard from an early age.
James Nesbitt
#45. I am in the public eye, and I accept that my actions may be open to question.
James Nesbitt
#46. There will only ever be 13 dwarves in 'The Hobbit' - and I was one of them. If I had my time again, would I do it? Yeah, I would.
James Nesbitt
#47. I want to beat up Michael Fassbender in a movie. I was with him at the beginning of his career when he did an episode of 'Murphy's Law.' He's a proper superstar and enormously talented, but I want to do a scene where I properly duff him up.
James Nesbitt
#48. There's no such thing as unwanted attention for an actor.
James Nesbitt
#50. Actually, I played Pontius Pilate as nice. An actor spends his life thinking he is Christ, and then he gets to play the character that killed him.
James Nesbitt
#51. I'm not an actor who is often asked to be in period things.
James Nesbitt
#52. I think teaching should be a vocation, and they should be paid more for it.
James Nesbitt
#54. Ever since I left Northern Ireland, I've always been pretty comfortable on my own, which contradicts a lot of people's perceptions of me.
James Nesbitt
#55. As I told Piers Morgan, 'Catholics have confession, whereas Northern Irish Protestants only have interviews.'
James Nesbitt
#56. I have three older sisters who, when we were children, used to hold me down on a bad day and put make-up all over me, so I've had an aversion to it all my life and hate sitting down in the make-up chair.
James Nesbitt
#57. While I've never 'phoned in' a performance, I think I have given some performances where I could have been a bit braver.
James Nesbitt
#58. Funnily enough, Northern Ireland is a great example of where politics can win over conflict. The decision to down arms and follow a political path would have been unthinkable once. It shows just what is possible.
James Nesbitt
#59. There's some irony in playing a journalist after some of the stuff that has been written about me, but it's a great profession, particularly investigative journalism.
James Nesbitt
#60. The reality of life in Northern Ireland is that if you were Protestant, you learned British history, and if you were Catholic, you learned Irish history in school.
James Nesbitt
#61. My preference is for good writing. It doesn't matter if it's for film or TV. Whatever. It starts with the writing. Even though I've had problems with writers, it doesn't matter how great of an actor you are. If the writing is bad, you're going to struggle.
James Nesbitt
#62. It's ridiculous, but it's horrible going bald. Anyone who says it isn't is lying.
James Nesbitt
#64. People love watching medical dramas - they also love watching documentaries about the workings of the brain.
James Nesbitt
#66. I've always been a family man and count myself as one of those who are lucky to have the comfort of a family.
James Nesbitt
#67. A lot of people of my Ulster Protestant background would have been very suspicious of the notion of a film about Bloody Sunday. Our fear would have been that it would be terribly anti-Britain and anti-soldiers: a piece of nationalist propaganda.
James Nesbitt
#68. When I was at drama school, I was totally broke, and a lot of my mates had jobs and were financially very good to me, so if, for example, I take them away on a trip to a football match in Europe, it means that I can pay them back a bit.
James Nesbitt
#69. Kids at a certain age don't necessarily want to be dragged to the other side of the world.
James Nesbitt
#70. Unification is less important than the fact Ireland is now conflict-free.
James Nesbitt
#71. I spend an awful lot of time by myself and enjoy that.
James Nesbitt
#72. Several years ago, I began losing my hair, and like a lot of men, it was a major concern to me, in fact it was practically an obsession. But, also I'm an actor, so I'm in the public eye a lot and I really felt that my hair loss could affect my career prospects.
James Nesbitt
#73. I've never felt that acting was my vocation - never had that tortured thing. I love acting, but it doesn't feed my soul.
James Nesbitt
#74. People don't watch TV only to relate to stuff. They also watch to find out about a world they can't relate to.
James Nesbitt
#76. Martin Freeman as [Bilbo] is just a revelation.
James Nesbitt
#77. I get an awful lot of people coming up and saying they went to school with me. There must have been 80,000 pupils at that school!
James Nesbitt
#78. When you see a tumour in the brain, it's an ugly looking thing. It's kind of black, grisly and messy. Or it can be white. To see it taken away is just amazing.
James Nesbitt
#79. In my life, I have made the occasional catastrophic choice, and it's just a case of moving on and learning from it.
James Nesbitt
#80. That thing of briefly losing sight of a child happened to me when the kids were younger, and you can't see them in the supermarket or wherever. It's a terrible, terrible moment ... the most unimaginable horror.
James Nesbitt
#81. Drama asks some uncomfortable questions at times ... It goes to pretty dark places.
James Nesbitt
#83. I started a French degree at university, but packed it in when I realised I really wanted to be an actor.
James Nesbitt
#84. All my adult life, there was the Troubles. That was the backdrop of my life.
James Nesbitt
#85. I'm an actor, learning lines and saying them in the right order.
James Nesbitt
#86. I loved my time growing up in Northern Ireland doing youth drama, that is where it all began for me.
James Nesbitt
#87. When I turned 40, subconsciously, life was a blank sheet. Before, it was disjointed, and I was very displaced and quite mad, but it was a brilliant time. Everyone thinks I must have been unhappy.
James Nesbitt
#88. I don't think I'll be doing a lot more commercials.
James Nesbitt
#89. My mother certainly doesn't think I'm charming!
James Nesbitt
#90. You can get a bit world-weary in this job, and 'The Passion' reminded me of what a fantastic job acting is and how lucky I am to be doing it.
James Nesbitt
#91. Perhaps our imagination needs crime stories to fulfill some craving we have, as a way to assuage a darkness in ourselves.
James Nesbitt
#92. I love nothing more than going to eat by myself with a newspaper.
James Nesbitt
#93. I lived a dual life, and when my dual life exploded, I began to feel much happier.
James Nesbitt
#95. My early ambitions were the same as they are now - to play for Manchester United. I was, and still am, football mad.
James Nesbitt
#96. Theatres, along with the likes of the Ulster Orchestra, for example, are the cultural heartbeats of our towns and cities, and without them, we are much poorer for it.
James Nesbitt
#97. I went to India with UNICEF in connection with Manchester United to raise money for children's education.
James Nesbitt
#98. Brain surgeons are dealing with the very last thread of life, and they have to be very confident, but I think they tend to remember their failures rather than their successes, and that must be very hard. Who do you share that failure with? That's why their personal lives are often disastrous.
James Nesbitt
#99. When I went to university, I was already working professionally with the Ulster Actors.
James Nesbitt
#100. If you are going to tell a story about a child going missing, it's going to have similarities with a real life child going missing.
James Nesbitt
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