I'm looking forward to locking swords with Douglas Henshall and working against the stunning backdrop of Shetland. I came to Scotland a lot in the '70s and '80s in various theatre productions and of course to film Hallam Foe but this is the furthest I've ever been.

I know I don't go looking for directors.

Then you realize that the preparation and the planning of this small army of people trying to head to the single aim of creating a work that's going to excite people is very risky. Of course, the odds are that it's not going to work out because there are too many possibilities of it going wrong.

In good comedy, the structure comes from truth and that weird eye that looks at the way life is.

We've seen a lot of dirty politics in Ireland. We know from the French, their wonderfully neurotic presidents, that our hands are sort of tied. The Italians - I don't know where it stops. No nation can claim We are an uncorrupt nation, therefore we will tell you what the morals of democracy are. Because it's going on everywhere.

You get to an age when you lose people close to you.

There has to be a reason of whether you look right or you bring the emotional or intellectual baggage of what's required for the storytelling. For me, it's not something I've aspired to say, I'm going to be working in Hollywood.

I'm not a comic person at all.

In fact, most of the work that I have done for the American Hollywood things have not been in Hollywood. The studios are going out in Europe or around the place working.

I've worked a lot with Noah Baumbach, and he doesn't make it easy to like his characters, but the stories are funny and witty and there's an edge to that kind of humanity.