James Nesbitt
James Nesbitt
William James Nesbitt, OBEis an actor and presenter from Northern Ireland. Born in Ballymena, County Antrim, Nesbitt grew up in the nearby village of Broughshane, before moving to Coleraine, County Londonderry. He wanted to become a teacher like his father, so he began a degree in French at the University of Ulster. He dropped out after a year when he decided to become an actor, and transferred to the Central School of Speech and Drama in London. After graduating in...
NationalityIrish
ProfessionTV Actor
Date of Birth15 January 1965
CountryIreland
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.
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.
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.
Although surgeons know how to deal with bits of the brain, they don't really know how it works.
I think a lot of us who grew up in Northern Ireland weren't politicised enough, frankly.
Kids at a certain age don't necessarily want to be dragged to the other side of the world.
People love watching medical dramas - they also love watching documentaries about the workings of the brain.
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.
Perhaps our imagination needs crime stories to fulfill some craving we have, as a way to assuage a darkness in ourselves.
I've never felt that acting was my vocation - never had that tortured thing. I love acting, but it doesn't feed my soul.
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.
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.
I'm an actor, learning lines and saying them in the right order.
My best friends are still the ones I first attached myself to when I went to school because, all of a sudden, I was leaving the rather pampered and occasionally very annoying world of having three older sisters to go to a male-dominated world.