Top 19 Ian McElhinney Quotes

Christopher Gore is a great character, portrayed with wisdom and understanding.

It used to be that if I was stopped in the street at all it would be for Ser Barristan Selmy, but now it’s just as often, if not more often, for my character in ‘Derry Girls,’ I find it extraordinary.

With ‘Stones is His Pockets‘ you have effectively a bare stage with two actors and yet a whole world in rural Ireland is created. There’s the countryside, the bar interior, the dressing room and the star‘s bedroom.

Adrenaline, swords – you just get off on it.

On another level I’d unfortunately read the books. I knew Barristan had a different story in the books and I was hoping for a bit more of Barristan alive before he met his comeuppance… well, comeuppance is unfair, he didn’t deserve a comeuppance.

I’ve met people who‘ve watched ‘Derry Girls’ in Australia and America and it’s incredible. I think the constant access to it, meaning you can watch it again and again helps.

I was living in Britain and then America, but it wasn’t until I returned to live in Ireland in the late ’70s that I really became aware of Seamus Heaney. I discovered quickly that his poems are very accessible.

There are still times when the person who is challenging you as an actor is also the person who sometimes challenges you as your child.

But I love the change and the variety directing brings.

‘Derry Girls’ just has a sense of knowing exactly who these people are and also a fun memory of how things were, even in spite of all the chaos around them. It’s very entertaining and it stays wonderfully buoyant because it focuses on the kids and the families.

But I think you have to accept – as I have accepted – that the demands of TV are different than the demand of book writing.

One of the issues with the fight scene – especially with actors – is that when the adrenaline gets going you lose the plot. Before you know it, you’ve hit somebody and you’ve hit them harder than you meant to.

The thing that surprised me the other day was, and I was quite taken aback when I realized it, I am nearly five-and-a-half years out of ‘Game of Thrones.’ I last filmed on it in the winter of 2013 and it’s kind of becoming, bizarrely, a bit of a distant memory.

There are certainly many British plays which go down far better with Dublin audiences than they would in Belfast.

Whatever the actor does on stage they have to be happy with it, because they are the ones doing it.

Being part of ‘Game of Thrones’ is amazing, really incredible.

It’s strange to be getting into your dotage and suddenly discovering that you have a fanbase.

Sometimes all you can do is sit back and be amazed.

It’s weird… I’ve been an actor for a long time and you can walk around more or less anonymously.