I'm such an odd mix of things. My grandfather was Indian: I've got more family living in India than I do in the U.K. My old man was East London. I was brought up in Yorkshire. My great-grandfather was Irish.
The basic policy of the British Government was that since the majority of people in Northern Ireland wished to remain in the United Kingdom, that was that. We asked what would happen if the majority wanted something else, if the majority wanted to se...
Though my grandmother had picked up modern ideas in America, she still had some conflicting 19th-century Irish notions. She believed that daughters, educated though they may be, should continue to live at home until they were married.
I never waited for my Irish Cream coffee to be the right temperature, with a storm happening outside and my fireplace crackling... I wrote every day, at home, in the office, whether I felt like it or not. I just did it.
I kind of have an interest in all history. And I suspect it comes from being Irish - we like stories, we like telling stories, which makes a lot of us lean towards being writers or actors or directors.
I went further and further back through the centuries to get a sense of perspective but now at least I understand why Irish history evokes such strong passions and emotions.
If you are a Northern Irish actor, maybe subconsciously more than consciously, you do have an instinctive responsibility at some point to tackle the recent history of where we have come from. It's not only a responsibility, but a privilege.
My dad was a very funny man - he's the one who taught me life would be awfully hard without humor! I'm sure his Irish wit in some way influenced my decision to become an actress.
My brother and I were born in an Irish county called Tipperary. We were both very math- and science-inclined in high school. My dad trained as an electrical engineer, and my mom is in microbiology.
Most boys' first hero is their father. That was definitely true of my dad. He was a proud Irish American and he taught me a lot about ethics and responsibility. He also introduced me to a lot of wonderful folk music.
There is no way in which we can retrospectively erase the Treaty of Vienna or the Great Irish Famine. It is a peculiar feature of human actions that, once performed, they can never be recuperated. What is true of the past will always be true of it.
I am delighted with the strong vote I have received. My message of positive leadership, patriotism and commitment clearly was resonating with tens of thousands of ordinary Irish people.
You think that religion is a thing that is there to help you and to see you through life, and then you wake up one morning and find the entire Irish situation, the civil war that's based on religion.
I think now, more than anytime I can remember, bands are sounding pretty similar whether they're English or American, from Manchester or London... or Leeds or Welsh or Irish.
I think I'm going to keep my Irish accent forever now in any movie I make, because chicks dig it and that's all I care about now!
I don't buy into the idea that an Irish writer should write about Ireland, or a gay writer should write about being gay.
The British don't runaway from terrorism. We have had 30-odd years of terrorism in our own country from the Irish Republican Army. We're used to it.
I'm born and raised in the Northeast. My parents are Irish immigrants. So our tendency is to shy away from the big yellow ball that comes up in the sky every once in a while.
My father's parents were Irish. Only a year before my father died, he and I went back to Ireland for a week to look at the old homestead.
They believed that Britain was in Ireland defending their own interests, therefore the Irish had the right to use violence to put them out. My argument was that that type of thinking was out of date.
Captain Richard Phillips: There's got to be something other than being a fisherman or kidnapping people. Muse: Maybe in America, Irish, maybe in America.
