"Acting is probably the greatest therapy in the world. You can get a lot stuff out of you on the set so you don't have to take it home with you at night. It's the stuff between the lines, the empty space between those lines which is interesting."
Dr. Robert Carlyle OBE (born 14 April 1961 in Glasgow, Scotland) doesn't use the Doctor title.
Robert is an actor born in Glasgow, and he frequently plays Violent Glaswegian characters as well as villains in general. Despite this, his co-stars on Once Upon a Time have noted that it's really hard to be scared of him/act as such because he's a really nice guy in real life. His best known roles include The Full Monty, Trainspotting, The World Is Not Enough, and the aforementioned Once Upon a Time. He also appears in the video for the Oasis song "Little by Little".
Roles
- Angela's Ashes, 1999 adaptation: Malachy McCourt Sr.
- The Full Monty: Gary "Gaz" Schofield
- Plunkett & Macleane: Plunkett
- Ravenous: Colonel Ives / F.W. Colqhoun
- The Beach: Daffy
- The 51st State: Felix DeSouza
- Trainspotting and T2 Trainspotting: Francis Begbie
- 28 Weeks Later: Don Harris
- The World Is Not Enough: Renard
- Eragon: Durza
- 24: Redemption: Carl Benton
- Hamish Macbeth
- Human Trafficking: Sergei Karpovich
- Hitler: The Rise of Evil: Adolf Hitler
- Once Upon a Time: Rumplestiltskin/Mr. Gold
- Stargate Universe: Nicholas Rush
- The Tournament: Father Joseph MacAvoy
- Castlevania: Lords of Shadow: Gabriel Belmont/Dracula
- The Full Monty: Gary "Gaz" Schofield
Tropes
- Comic-Book Fantasy Casting: The character Herr Kleiser from the comic book The Ultimates was designed after Carlyle's likeness.
- Creator Backlash: He hated that Neal was killed off in Once Upon a Time, feeling Rumplestiltskin's character lost his main motivations afterwards.
- Dyeing for Your Art: He had shoulder length hair when the Trainspotting sequel was put in production, which he cut off for it. As a result, Rumpelstiltskin has short hair in Season 6 of Once Upon a Time.
- Fake Brit: He's played English characters in The Full Monty, The 51st State and 28 Weeks Later.
- Playing with Character Type: He often plays the Butt-Monkey of the story. Rumplestiltskin from Once Upon a Time starts out like that, but grows to resent his status as such, and becomes the Dark One to pull off a Who's Laughing Now??.
- Production Posse: With Danny Boyle - in Trainspotting (and its eventual sequel), The Beach, 28 Weeks Later (though he was a producer on that one). He was once quoted as saying "I'd work with Danny Boyle any day of the week."
- Typecasting: Usually an unlucky Butt-Monkey, but he does have quite a bit of range.
- What Could Have Been: He turned down a role in 28 Days Later, but was cast in the sequel.