279 quotes found
"Art attracts us only by what it reveals of our most secret self."
"The truth is that there is no terror untempered by some great moral idea."
"Beauty is composed of an eternal, invariable element whose quantity is extremely difficult to determine, and a relative element which might be, either by turns or all at once, period, fashion, moral, passion."
"Fifty years after the October Revolution, the American industry rules cinema the world over. There is nothing much to add to this statement of fact. Except that on our own modest level we too should provoke two or three Vietnams in the bosom of the vast Hollywood-Cinecittá-Mosfilm-Pinewood-etc. empire, and, both economically and aesthetically, struggling on two fronts as it were, create cinemas which are national, free, brotherly, comradely and bonded in friendship."
"All you need for a movie is a gun and a girl."
"To me style is just the outside of content, and content the inside of style, like the outside and the inside of the human body—both go together, they can’t be separated."
"The cinema is not an art which films life: the cinema is something between art and life. Unlike painting and literature, the cinema both gives to life and takes from it, and I try to render this concept in my films. Literature and painting both exist as art from the very start; the cinema doesn’t."
"Photography is truth. The cinema is truth twenty-four times per second."
"I would never see a good movie for the first time on television."
"[I think] the movie is not a thing which is taken by the camera; the movie is the reality of the movie moving from reality to the camera."
"In films, we are trained by the American way of moviemaking to think we must understand and 'get' everything right away. But this is not possible. When you eat a potato, you don't understand each atom of the potato!"
"To be only spectacular should be 5 or 10 percent of cinema."
"American pictures usually have no subject, only a story. A pretty woman is not a subject. Julia Roberts doing this and that is not a subject."
"Movies in Hollywood now, for the past 20 or 30 years, are made mainly by lawyers or agents."
"Film begins with D. W. Griffith and ends with Abbas Kiarostami."
"She left me because of my many faults; I left her because I couldn’t talk movies with her."
"Zelensky's intervention at the Cannes festival goes without saying if you look at it from the angle of what is called "staging": a bad actor, a professional comedian, under the eye of other professionals in their own professions. I believe I must have said something along these lines a long time ago. It therefore took the staging of yet another world war and the threat of another catastrophe for us to know that Cannes is a propaganda tool like any other. They propagate Western aesthetics whilst thinking it is not a big deal, but it is just that. The truth of the images is only advancing slowly. Now imagine that the war itself is this aesthetic deployed during a world festival, whose stakeholders are the states in conflict, or rather “interests”, broadcasting representations of which we are all spectators for… you, like me. We often say “conflict of interest”, which is a tautology. There is no conflict, big or small, unless there is interest. Brutus, Nero, Biden, or Putin, Constantinople, Iraq or Ukraine, not much has changed, apart from the mass murder."
"A story should have a beginning, a middle and an end … but not necessarily in that order."
"In this profession, I always admire people who are going on, who have a sort of idea and, however crazy it is, are putting it through; they are putting people and things together, and they make something. I always admire this. But I can't see his pictures. I sit for perhaps twenty-five or thirty or fifty minutes and then I have to leave, because his pictures make me so nervous. I have the feeling the whole time that he wants to tell me things, but I don't understand what it is, and sometimes I have the feeling that he's bluffing, double-crossing me."
"I've never gotten anything out of his movies. They have felt constructed, faux intellectual and completely dead. Cinematographically uninteresting and infinitely boring. Godard is a fucking bore. He's made his films for the critics. One of the movies, Masculin, féminin, was shot here in Sweden. It was mindnumbingly boring."
"As soon as we were happy, he tried to get at us by another means, another path. He provoked a new ordeal. One could have thought that it bored him, happiness."
"Someone like Jean-Luc Godard is for me intellectual counterfeit money when compared to a good kung-fu film."
"Tirer les marrons du feu avec la patte du chat."
"On ne meurt qu'une fois; et c'est pour si longtemps!"
"Je fais toujours bien le premier vers: mais j'ai peine à faire les autres."
"Le monde, chère Agnès, est une étrange chose."
"Une femme d'esprit est un diable en intrigue."
"Il y a fagots et fagots."
"Nous avons changé tout cela."
"J’enrage de bon cœur d’avoir tort, lorsque j’ai raison."
"Ah que je— Vous l'avez voulu, vous l'avez voulu, George Dandin, vous l'avez voulu, cela vous sied fort bien, et vous voilà ajusté comme il faut, vous avez justement ce que vous méritez."
"Que diable allait-il faire dans cette galère?"
"Ah! Il n'y a plus d'enfants!"
"Presque tous les hommes meurent de leurs remèdes, et non pas de leurs maladies."
"Quare Opium facit dormire: … Quia est in eo Virtus dormitiva."
"Si l’emploi de la comédie est de corriger les vices des hommes, je ne vois pas par quelle raison il y en aura de privilégiés. Celui-ci est, dans l’État, d’une conséquence bien plus dangereuse que tous les autres ; et nous avons vu que le théâtre a une grande vertu pour la correction. Les plus beaux traits d’une sérieuse morale sont moins puissants, le plus souvent, que ceux de la satire ; et rien ne reprend mieux la plupart des hommes que la peinture de leurs défauts. C’est une grande atteinte aux vices que de les exposer à la risée de tout le monde. On souffre aisément des répréhensions ; mais on ne souffre point la raillerie. On veut bien être méchant, mais on ne veut point être ridicule."
"Vous êtes un sot en trois lettres, mon fils."
"Contre la médisance il n'est point de rempart."
"Ceux de qui la conduite offre le plus à rire Sont toujours sur autrui les premiers à médire."
"À votre nez, mon frère, elle se rit de vous."
"Une femme a toujours une vengeance prête."
"Couvrez ce sein que je ne saurais voir. Par de pareils objets les âmes sont blessées."
"Pour être dévot, je n'en suis pas moins homme."
"Le scandale du monde est ce qui fait l'offense, Et ce n'est pas pécher que pécher en silence."
"Je l'ai vu, dis-je, de mes propres yeux vu."
"Sur quelque préférence une estime se fonde, Et c'est n'estimer rien qu'estimer tout le monde."
"Et c’est une folie, à nulle autre, seconde, De vouloir se mêler de corriger le monde."
"C'est un parleur étrange, et qui trouve toujours L'art de ne vous rien dire avec de grands discours."
"Que de son cuisinier il s'est fait un mérite, Et que c'est à sa table à qui l'on rend visite."
"On voit qu'il se travaille à dire de bons mots."
"Plus on aime quelqu'un, moins il faut qu'on le flatte: À rien pardonner le pur amour éclate."
"Les doutes sont fâcheux plus que toute autre chose."
"On peut être honnête homme et faire mal des vers."
"Si de probité tout était revêtu, Si tous les cœurs était francs, justes et dociles, La plupart des vertus nous seraient inutiles, Puisqu'on en met l'usage à pouvoir sans ennui Supporter dans nos droits l'injustice d'autrui."
"C'est un merveilleux assaisonnement aux plaisirs qu'on goûte que la présence des gens qu'on aime."
"J'aime mieux un vice commode, Qu'une fatigante vertu."
"Le véritable Amphitryon, Est l'Amphitryon où l'on dine."
"Le Seigneur Jupiter sait dorer la pilule."
"[J]e veux que tu me dises à qui lu parles quand lu dis cela. Je parle... je parle à mon bonnet."
"Les beaux yeux de ma cassette."
"Vous parlez devant un homme à qui tout Naples est connu."
"Tout ce qui n'est point prose, est vers; et tout ce qui n'est point vers, est prose."
"Par ma foi, il y a plus de quarante ans que je dis de la prose, sans que j'en susse rien."
"Ah, la belle chose que de savoir quelque chose."
"Jurons, ma belle, Une ardeur éternelle."
"Je le soutiendrai devant tout le monde."
"La grammaire qui sait régenter jusqu'aux rois."
"Il est de sel attique assaisonné partout."
"Un sot savant est sot plus qu'un sot ignorant."
"Il faut manger pour vivre, et non pas vivre pour manger."
"But Comedy justly treated, as you find it in Molière, whom we so clownishly mishandled, the Comedy of Molière throws no infamous reflection upon life. It is deeply conceived, in the first place, and therefore it cannot be impure. Meditate on that statement. Never did man wield so shrieking a scourge upon vice, but his consummate self-mastery is not shaken while administering it. Tartuffe and Harpagon, in fact, are made each to whip himself and his class, the false pietists, and the insanely covetous. Molière has only set them in motion. He strips Folly to the skin, displays the imposture of the creature, and is content to offer her better clothing, with the lesson Chrysale reads to Philaminte and Bélise. He conceives purely, and he writes purely, in the simplest language, the simplest of French verse. The source of his wit is clear reason: it is a fountain of that soil; and it springs to vindicate reason, common-sense, rightness and justice; for no vain purpose ever. The wit is of such pervading spirit that it inspires a pun with meaning and interest. His moral does not hang like a tail, or preach from one character incessantly cocking an eye at the audience, as in recent realistic French Plays; but is in the heart of his work, throbbing with every pulsation of an organic structure. If Life is likened to the comedy of Molière, there is no scandal in the comparison."
"Honest women are inconsolable for the mistakes they haven't made."
"You can pretend to be serious but you can't pretend to be witty."
"The little I know, I owe to my ignorance."
"When a man marries his mistress, he creates a job vacancy."
"When a man steals your wife there is no better revenge than to let him keep her."
"Do not the most moving moments of our lives find us all without words?"
"I have designed my style pantomimes as white ink drawings on black backgrounds, so that man’s destiny appears as a thread lost in an endless labyrinth... I have tried to shed some gleams of light on the shadow of man startled by his anguish."
"Mime makes the invisible, visible and the visible, invisible."
"Music conveys moods and images. Even in opera, where plots deal with the structure of destiny, it’s music, not words, that provides power."
"Music and silence... combine strongly because music is done with silence, and silence is full of music."
"In silence and movement you can show the reflection of people."
"Never get a mime talking. He won’t stop."
"To communicate through silence is a link between the thoughts of man."
"I have spent more than half a lifetime trying to express the tragic moment."
"Chaplin made me laugh and cry without saying a word. I had an instinct. I was touched by the soul of Chaplin — Mime is not an imitator but a creator."
"Fathers, I do not practice. I’m not religious in life, but when I perform "The Creation of the World" and when my soul is touched by the confrontation of "Good and Evil", then God enters in me."
"No art is superior to another one, but every art looks for expertise and perfection. This is life, which continues; this is why there is no death. There is continuation. There is no silence. There is a continuation of thought."
"Silence is like a flame, you see?"
"He's garnered honorary degrees from prestigious universities across America. He's had three wives, four children, survived the Holocaust, joined the Resistance and marched in Patton's army. All this, and he has a wickedly weird and original sense of humor. "Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards," Marceau once said, "for you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup." Even when you don't quite get it, Marceau makes you think twice."
"Perhaps true appreciation of Marceau requires a step back in time. Before Marceau broke out of an invisible box and stepped into millions of American's living rooms on Max Liebman's "Show of Shows" nearly 40 years ago, you could fit the number of people who knew or much less cared anything about the art of pantomime in a Citroen. What we know of mime — the mute theatrics, the exaggerated body language, the requisite black-and-white get-up — was essentially minted by Marceau. … When Marceau is gone, we won't say, "There goes one of the world's greatest mimes," but "There goes 'the' world's great mime.""
"When the seagulls follow the trawler, it's because they think sardines will be thrown into the sea."
"After his first training session in heaven, George Best, from his favourite right wing, turned the head of God who was filling in at left-back. I would love him to save me a place in his team - George Best that is, not God."
"I feel close to the rebelliousness and vigour of the youth here. Perhaps time will separate us, but nobody can deny that here, behind the windows of Manchester, there is an insane love of football, of celebration and of music."
"Because arguing with racist people is like playing chess with a pigeon: It doesn't matter how good you are! The pigeon is going to knock all the pieces down and shit on the board and parade around like he's won. (the "Playing chess with pigeons..." statement is not something that originated with Eric Cantona but was first created by an Amazon product reviewer and is often repeated by others, per Snopes.)"
"As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods, they kill us for their sport. Soon the science will not only be able to slow down the ageing of the cells, soon the science will fix the cells to the state. And so we will become eternal. Only accidents, crimes, wars, will still kill us but unfortunately, crimes, wars, will multiply. I love football. Thank you. (The first sentence is itself a quotation from King Lear)"
""The three million people in the street, they go to the bank, withdraw their money, and the banks collapse...That's a real threat, there's a real revolution," he said in the video on the web. At the time, French workers were taking to the streets to protests France's pensions reform."
"He was the only player I saw who the manager never had a go at. We all went to a film premiere and were told to wear black ties. Eric turned up in a cream lemon suit with Nike trainers. The manager told him that he looked fantastic!"
"Michael, I know she’s a nice girl. She’s too bloody nice. She's supposed to be playing a bitch. Every day I have to make her into a bitch."
"It's weird. I always had the premonition that Sharon belonged to me just for a little while."
"She was the least hypocritical woman you could ever meet: once, when an executive told her that we should ask for single cabins in the transatlantic that brought us to the United States, she simply said, "Why? Everybody knows that we live together.""
"I'm forced to mix with people of this industry and I can swear that is really difficult to meet people with her nature and her spirit. Generally, everybody is opportunistic here. Sharon had grace and charm; she knew how to make anybody's life easier. When somebody was busy, she was there in a discreet manner to serve you a drink or a coffee."
"Without her I feel lost, I can't explain this in words. However there are things that I just can't stand thinking of; the way she and our son died."
"I don't know that you can speak of shock … Nothing is too shocking for me. I don't really know what is shocking. When you tell the story of a man who is beheaded, you have to show how they cut off his head. If you don't, it's like telling a dirty joke and leaving out the punch line."
"I see Macbeth as a young, open-faced warrior, who is gradually sucked into a whirpool of events because of his ambition. When he meets the weird sisters and hears their prophecy, he's like the man who hopes to win a million — a gamble for high stakes."
"It's easy to direct while acting — there’s one less person to argue with."
"If I had killed somebody, it wouldn’t have had so much appeal to the press, you see? But… fucking, you see, and the young girls. Judges want to fuck young girls. Juries want to fuck young girls. Everyone wants to fuck young girls!"
"You have to show violence the way it is. If you don't show it realistically, then that's immoral and harmful. If you don't upset people, then that's obscenity."
"I never made a film which fully satisfied me."
"I want people to go to the movies. I am the man of the spectacle. I'm playing."
"People like Truffaut, Lelouch and Godard are like little kids playing at being revolutionaries. I've passed through this stage. I lived in a country where these things happened seriously."
"In Paris, one is always reminded of being a foreigner. If you park your car wrong, it is not the fact that it's on the sidewalk that matters, but the fact that you speak with an accent."
"I can only say that whatever my life and work have been, I'm not envious of anyone — and this is my biggest satisfaction."
"‘What’s wrong?’ I asked. She said her asthma was playing her up.… She was wheezing quite audibly by now. She picked up my towel and said, ‘I’d better rest awhile; otherwise I might pass out.’"
"We dried ourselves and each other. She said she was feeling better. Then, very gently, I began to kiss and caress her. After this had gone on for some time, I led her over to the couch."
"There was no doubt about Sandra's experience and lack of inhibition. She spread herself and I entered her. She wasn't unresponsive. Yet, when I asked her softly if she was liking it, she resorted to her favorite expression: ‘It’s all right.’"
"If you have a great passion it seems that the logical thing is to see the fruit of it, and the fruit are children."
"Cinema should make you forget you are sitting in a theater."
"My films are the expression of momentary desires. I follow my instincts, but in a disciplined way."
"It's already getting more and more difficult to make an ambitious and original film. There are less and less independent producers or independent companies and an increasing number of corporations who are more interested in balance sheets than in artistic achievement. They want to make a killing each time they produce a film. They're only interested in the lowest common denominator because they're trying to reach the widest audience. And you got some kind of entropy. That's the danger; they look more alike, those films. The style is all melting and it all looks the same. Even young directors — for most of them, their only standard of achievement is how well their films do on the first weekend or whatever. It worries me. But then, from time to time, you have a film like The Usual Suspects or.... I'm trying to think of something American with some kind of originality... Pulp Fiction."
"You know, whenever you do something new and original, people run to see it because it's different. Then, if it happens to be successful, the studios rush to imitate it. It becomes commonplace right away. But it's been like that before, I think. Now, the stakes are so gigantic that they cut each other's throats. So if most of the films are failures, then those that succeed so spectacularly, so commercially, become the norm. It's like a roulette for the studios. The problem with it is that it becomes more and more of a committee. Before, you dealt with the studio. It had one or two persons and now you have masses of executives who have to justify their existence and write so-called "creative notes" and have creative meetings. They obsess about the word creative probably because they aren't."
"Berlin was great. It’s a new generation. If you continue to hate, you are entering into the same philosophy that began the war. You have to look forward at people and new times."
"Whenever I get happy, I always have a terrible feeling."
"33 years ago I pleaded guilty, and I served time at the prison for common law crimes at Chino, not in a VIP prison. That period was to have covered the totality of my sentence. By the time I left prison, the judge had changed his mind and claimed that the time served at Chino did not fulfil the entire sentence, and it is this reversal that justified my leaving the United States."
"On February 26 last, Roger Gunson, the deputy district attorney in charge of the case in 1977, now retired, testified under oath before Judge Mary Lou Villar in the presence of David Walgren, the present deputy district attorney in charge of the case, who was at liberty to contradict and question him, that on September 16, 1977, Judge Rittenband stated to all the parties concerned that my term of imprisonment in Chino constituted the totality of the sentence I would have to serve."
"Gunson added that it was false to claim, as the present district attorney’s office does in their request for my extradition, that the time I spent in Chino was for the purpose of a diagnostic study."
"Oh, the little man wanted me—Roman Polanski. Very dwarfish creature with a high giggle. After a take, he wouldn't say, "Cut." One would just hear a "Tee hee hee." [...] Roman presented everything in [such] a calm, matter-of-fact way that the creeping terror just builds. It's sheer genius on his part. It's a very quiet movie where a door creaking can unnerve one. There's a lot of dark comedy in there, too. he was a very careful director—explained everything, multiple takes, very demanding, very appreciative when one got it right. Loved to talk old movies with me."
"The probation officers quoted a pair of psychiatrists as saying that Mr. Polanski was not “a pedophile” or a “sexual deviate.”"
"I would rather live in a country where children are protected and their predators prosecuted, and even (which in Hollywood is evidently not always the same thing) disapproved of."
"He sees things from every point of view. He's an extraordinarily hard worker. I think he's worked for a long time, in every field. He's talented, passionate and has had an incredibly hard and full life that I'm sure you know about. I can not imagine myself having some of his experiences. You either swim or drown, but some like him go on and make every moment important. I think that's what he does."
"At the physical end, Parkour is getting over all the obstacles in your path as you would in an emergency situation. You want to move in such a way, with any movement, that will help you gain the most ground on someone/something as if escaping from someone/something or chasing toward someone/something. Also, wherever you go, you must be able to get back. If you go from A to B, you need to be able to get back from B to A. You don't need to do the same "move," but just get back.""
"It's about what you can do at that particular moment. If someone is stuck in a fire and you say, "Well, two years ago I could have done something that would have saved you" then you are useless. Parkour is not what you could have done for whatever excuse. If you aren't able to help someone, what use are you?"
"My thing from the beginning is to have it be useful, and be able to help others. It's about being efficient and getting there as fast as you can. If people want to do it more artistically or in a freestyle way, I have absolutely no problem with it — that's the way it's going to evolve. It's not my style, but if it's other people's [style], that's perfect."
"All these people here, they come and they want me to do big things, expect me to do big drops so they can sell pictures, put it on their websites, whatever. But what is my motivation then? I could do this jump once and maybe get hurt, but even if I don't get hurt what is the point right here, right now? To make these people happy? If my family was over there and needed me, I wouldn't even hesitate. I would do it for them and that's who I train and do these things for. I'm not a monkey, I can't be treated like one. I don't understand how people want to put themselves into great risk for money. I've trained so long and hard for myself, to save people, to protect my family... People get into Parkour now just train in order to do risks for media, I just can't understand why they would do so. That was never the goal of Parkour. Money changes people, but that money cannot change my goal, my motivation or why I do this. I'm on tour now for you, I'm here talking to you so you can help others and that's how things work, never think it's the other way around. I'm doing this for you guys, to inspire you, that's it."
"Parkour belongs to the ones who live it, not the ones who want to live thanks to it."
"Our aim is to take our art to the world and make people understand what it is to move."
"Understand that this art has been created by few soldiers in Vietnam to escape or reach: and this is the spirit I'd like parkour to keep. You have to make the difference between what is useful and what is not in emergency situations. Then you'll know what is parkour and what is not. So if you do acrobatics things on the street with no other goal than showing off, please don't say it's parkour. Acrobatics existed long time ago before parkour."
"Bare feet are the best shoes!"
"If someone puts you in front of a 30m high wall, tells you to get over it, and then comes back two years later and you're still there, you've made no progress. You should find another wall."
"If you are in front of a wall that you cannot get past, would you just keep banging your head into the wall?... No, you would find a new wall."
"A little backflip (backflips), but it's not part of Parkour, but I like doing this since I did gym."
"Obstacles are found everywhere, and in overcoming them we nourish ourselves."
"Down there we know, the streets we know, but up here? Nobody's been here."
"First, do it. Second, do it well. Third, do it well and fast — that means you're a professional."
"If I commit suicide, it will not be to destroy myself but to put myself back together again. Suicide will be for me only one means of violently reconquering myself, of brutally invading my being, of anticipating the unpredictable approaches of God. By suicide, I reintroduce my design in nature, I shall for the first time give things the shape of my will."
"It is not opium which makes me work but its absence, and in order for me to feel its absence it must from time to time be present."
"However fiercely opposed one may be to the present order, an old respect for the idea of order itself often prevents people from distinguishing between order and those who stand for order, and leads them in practise to respect individuals under the pretext of respecting order itself."
"Never tire yourself more than necessary, even if you have to found a culture on the fatigue of your bones."
"All true language is incomprehensible, Like the chatter of a beggar’s teeth."
"Where there is a stink of shit there is a smell of being."
"The race of prophets is extinct. Europe is becoming set in its ways, slowly embalming itself beneath the wrappings of its borders, its factories, its law-courts and its universities. The frozen Mind cracks between the mineral staves which close upon it. The fault lies with your mouldy systems, your logic of 2 + 2 = 4. The fault lies with you, Chancellors, caught in the net of syllogisms. You manufacture engineers, magistrates, doctors, who know nothing of the true mysteries of the body or the cosmic laws of existence. False scholars blind outside this world, philosophers who pretend to reconstruct the mind. The least act of spontaneous creation is a more complex and revealing world than any metaphysics."
"The Theatre of Cruelty has been created in order to restore to the theatre a passionate and convulsive conception of life, and it is in this sense of violent rigour and extreme condensation of scenic elements that the cruelty on which it is based must be understood. This cruelty, which will be bloody when necessary but not systematically so, can thus be identified with a kind of severe moral purity which is not afraid to pay life the price it must be paid."
"With society and its public, there is no longer any other language than that of bombs, barricades, and all that follows."
"Tragedy on the stage is no longer enough for me, I shall bring it into my own life."
"There are souls that are incurable and lost to the rest of society. Deprive them of one means of folly, they will invent ten thousand others. They will create subtler, wilder methods, methods that are absolutely desperate. Nature herself is fundamentally antisocial, it is only by a usurpation of powers that the organized body of society opposes the natural inclination of humanity."
"So long as we have failed to eliminate any of the causes of human despair, we do not have the right to try to eliminate those means by which man tries to cleanse himself of despair."
"Hell is of this world and there are men who are unhappy escapees from hell, escapees destined eternally to reenact their escape."
"Suicidez-vous, désespérés, et vous, torturés du corps et de l'âme, perdez tout espoir. Il n'y a plus pour vous de soulagement en ce monde. Le monde vit de vos charniers."
"Ah! How neatly tied, in these people, is the umbilical cord of morality! Since they left their mothers they have never sinned, have they? They are apostles, they are the descendants of priests; one can only wonder from what source they draw their indignation, and above all how much they have pocketed to do this, and in any case what it has done for them."
"You are outside life, you are above life, you have miseries which the ordinary man does not know, you exceed the normal level, and it is for this that men refuse to forgive you, you poison their peace of mind, you undermine their stability. You have irrepressible pains whose essence is to be inadaptable to any known state, indescribable in words. You have repeated and shifting pains, incurable pains, pains beyond imagining, pains which are neither of the body nor of the soul, but which partake of both. And I share your suffering, and I ask you: who dares to ration our relief?... We are not going to kill ourselves just yet. In the meantime, leave us the hell alone."
"When we speak the word “life,” it must be understood we are not referring to life as we know it from its surface of fact, but to that fragile, fluctuating center which forms never reach."
"The theater, which is in no thing, but makes use of everything—gestures, sounds, words, screams, light, darkness—rediscovers itself at precisely the point where the mind requires a language to express its manifestations.... To break through language in order to touch life is to create or recreate the theatre."
"Theater of Cruelty means a theater difficult and cruel for myself first of all. And, on the level of performance, it is not the cruelty we can exercise upon each other by hacking at each other’s bodies, carving up our personal anatomies, or, like Assyrian emperors, sending parcels of human ears, noses, or neatly detached nostrils through the mail, but the much more terrible and necessary cruelty which things can exercise against us. We are not free. And the sky can still fall on our heads. And the theater has been created to teach us that first of all."
"Written poetry is worth reading once, and then should be destroyed. Let the dead poets make way for others. Then we might even come to see that it is our veneration for what has already been created, however beautiful and valid it may be, that petrifies us."
"There is in every madman a misunderstood genius whose idea, shining in his head, frightened people, and for whom delirium was the only solution to the strangulation that life had prepared for him."
"It is not a certain conformity of manners that the painting of Van Gogh attacks, but rather the conformity of institutions themselves. And even external nature, with her climates, her tides, and her equinoctial storms, cannot, after Van Gogh’s stay upon earth, maintain the same gravitation."
"It is almost impossible to be a doctor and an honest man, but it is obscenely impossible to be a psychiatrist without at the same time bearing the stamp of the most incontestable madness: that of being unable to resist that old atavistic reflex of the mass of humanity, which makes any man of science who is absorbed by this mass a kind of natural and inborn enemy of all genius."
"It is thus that the few rare lucid well-disposed people who have had to struggle on the earth find themselves at certain hours of the day or night in the depth of certain authentic and waking nightmare states, surrounded by the formidable suction, the formidable tentacular oppression of a kind of civic magic which will soon be seen appearing openly in social behavior."
"I myself spent nine years in an insane asylum and I never had the obsession of suicide, but I know that each conversation with a psychiatrist, every morning at the time of his visit, made me want to hang myself, realizing that I would not be able to cut his throat."
"No one has ever written, painted, sculpted, modeled, built, or invented except literally to get out of hell."
"But how is one to make a scientist understand that there is something unalterably deranged about differential calculus, quantum theory, or the obscene and so inanely liturgical ordeals of the precession of the equinoxes."
"And what is an authentic madman? It is a man who preferred to become mad, in the socially accepted sense of the word, rather than forfeit a certain superior idea of human honor. So society has strangled in its asylums all those it wanted to get rid of or protect itself from, because they refused to become its accomplices in certain great nastinesses. For a madman is also a man whom society did not want to hear and whom it wanted to prevent from uttering certain intolerable truths."
"[Nietzsche’s] definition of cruelty informs Artaud’s own, declaring that all art embodies and intensifies the underlying brutalities of life to recreate the thrill of experience … Although Artaud did not formally cite Nietzsche, [their writing] contains a familiar persuasive authority, a similar exuberant phraseology, and motifs in extremis …"
"Artaud sought to remove aesthetic distance, bringing the audience into direct contact with the dangers of life. By turning theatre into a place where the spectator is exposed rather than protected, Artaud was committing an act of cruelty upon them."
"Si la Gestapo avait les moyens de vous faire parler, les politiciens d’aujourd’hui ont les moyens de vous faire taire."
"Le capitalisme, c'est l'exploitation de l'homme par l'homme. Le communisme, c'est le contraire !"
"Les psychiatres sont très efficaces. Avant, je pissais au lit et j'avais honte. J'ai été voir un psychiatre et ça va mieux. Maintenant, je pisse au lit mais je suis fier."
"Tu sais ce que c'est qu'un sandwich polonais ? c'est deux ticket de pain avec un ticket de jambon au milieu."
"Le communisme, c'est une des seules maladies graves qu'on n'a pas expérimenté d'abord sur des animaux."
"The stage is like a cage of light. People are no longer afraid of you - they are the ones out there in the dark, watching."
"Pretty little darling. I'm in great shape, I slept a lot. If you only knew the dreams I've had, I know you like the back of my hand [...] You’re going to take a nice shower and think of me."
"124 kilos, and right now I'm not erect, erect is 126. I've got a beam in my pants."
"Never, O never have I abused a woman. Hurting a woman would be like kicking my own mother's tummy."
"The monstre sacré (Depardieu) indulged in many things during the shoot ... Taking advantage of the privacy of a carriage. Slipping his big paw under my petticoats to supposedly get a better feel of me. Me, not letting him get to me."
"He is the child of parents who forbade him nothing. [...] As a result he had a relationship with freedom that was almost unknown among his generation in France."
"My father was a magnificent Irishman with a Barrymore profile and the physique of a boxer."
"Because I was stupid, I said, To hell with it, and I joined a drama school. [It was a ridiculously little school, which was first run by a very clever woman, but she soon was replaced by] "a nitwit, who had read a few books on the Actor's Studio and was very much into analysis, instead of teaching us how to walk and talk!""
"[O'Brien joined the Dublin Gate Theatre) where Orson Welles had started. Very few people know that he started in Dublin, most people think it was the Mercury in New York. James Mason, Peggy Cummins, Edward Mulhare - they all used to work for the Gate Theatre. My father was extremely furious when he found out that I was wasting my time being an actor. He also got wind of the fact that the star of the production (Micheál Mac Liammóir) was one of the biggest queens alive. He also played the part of Jago in Orson Welles' OTHELLO. This really didn't help. He cut my money off.""
"Now (Burt Lancaster) was a guy, terrific. I've worked with some Hollywood actors, but he was worth all of them. He used to be a circus acrobat. He had this marvellous physique, and while other actors would choose to act like primadonnas when it came to dangerous scenes, Lancaster would do most of the stuff himself. And he was a friendly guy, always helping us little-knowns when we had problems. This was one of my first more important parts and I was very unsure of myself. He was always telling us what we could do to improve our stuff. A great guy."
"(James Garner) was a very good-looking fellow, all the girls went crazy for him, and a good actor at that, but he, like others I used to work with, seemed to be self-conscious and nervous, for no discernible reason. I mean, these guys were famous and successful. But they often behaved like little girls when it came to things like, Why is he getting a longer close-up and I don't, stuff like that. I mean, this may be important when this one close-up is all the screen time you have, but they are the leading players, so why do they behave that way? I never understood that..."
"[Unnamed actress on the set of Grand Prix] never had eyes for me. Hell, she wouldn't even talk to me, after she'd found out that I was just an unimportant actor. Good grief! Then, this is what happened: We were sitting in the foyer of the Hotel de Paris in Monte Carlo. She, myself and Antonio. Then an assistant director crossed our path. That actress was trying to get him to take us to the theatre where they were showing the rushes of the day before. After some discussion, she persuaded him. He said: `Be quiet, I'm gonna lose my job...' So we hid in the balcony, looking down, where that wonderful director Frankenheimer was sitting. After some minutes of racing cars, finally her scene came, and she was doing a phone call - she was playing a sophisticated magazine editor -, and suddenly you could hear the director, who had this loud, resonant voice, howling in rage, because he didn't like her at all. `Oh my God, she's awful! She can't walk, she can't talk, look at her hair!' So he turned to that faggot hairdresser, who was like Katherine the Great, and this guy said: `Well, usually she plays this peasant types. I don't know why you cast her for this role in the first place!' And remember, this actress was sitting there with us, and she nearly went crazy! She was squirming with embarrassment. This is an actor's nightmare, you know. The next day she was fired."
"Carné used to behave like a hysterical maniac. I had a small part in that film. Maurice Ronet and Annie Girardot were also in it. He was screaming like a maniac. But he was a masterful director. LES ENFANTS DU PARADIS is one of the greatest films ever made."
"Sollima was considered to be the intellectual among the Western filmmakers. I enjoyed working with him. He was a very intelligent and gifted man."
"On one occasion, I tried to cash in the pay check, and they wouldn't give me the money, 'cause the check was for one `Donald O'Brien'. So I had to go to the Embassy and have my passport corrected, with `Donald' in parentheses."
"(Gordon Mitchell) weighed 220 pounds when he did these muscle pictures, and he went down to 160 pounds for this movie, like nothing."
"(Richard Harrison) is one of the nicest American actors I have worked with."
"I remember that this production [IL SESSO DELLA STREGA] was so cheap we were thrown out of the hotel we were staying at. Believe it or not, we realized that each one of us would have to pay for himself! They sure had money trouble."
"(Camille Keaton) was very nice, but I remember, when we talked to each other, she behaved like a verginella, a little virgin, you know, always avoiding sex in conversation. She did sex movies, you say?"
"(John Steiner) was a good actor, but we didn't get along well. I am Irish, he is British, maybe that's why..."
"(Raimund Harmstorf) was an incredibly good-looking guy. He used to be a Decathlon athlete, I think. These people have the best physiques because they have to do everything, run, jump, throw weights."
"(Lucio Fulci) was a great director. Many terrible things happened to him in his life. He was rather unlucky. I have always enjoyed working with him greatly, as he was a truly original human being with a great love for cinema."
"[Camilla Fulci] was about 15 or so at the time. I tried to remind her of her riding along the set [of 1975's Four of the Apocalypse). She looked very strange, when I said that. A stuntman led me away and showed me that the lower half of the poor girl's body was paralyzed because of a riding accident, just like that of Christopher Reeves! She was such a lovely girl. It made me feel very bad that I had said that.""
"[GIOCHI EROTICI DI UNA FAMIGLIA PERBENE] was one of these sex flicks where the cameraman always measures the distance between the camera and your crotch, which makes for a very strange working atmosphere."
"[O'Brien's heroes are] William Butler Yeats, Michael Collins, André Malraux, Maurice Ravel, Giorgio Di Cirico, Laurence Olivier and Max Schmeling. And of course the great Douglas Baader, the war pilot who had no legs. When he was captured by the Germans, they allowed the British to parachute his steel legs. And he escaped! So, I don't care about The Merry Wives of Windsor, but talk to me about Douglas Baader!"
"(Luciano Rossi) was strange, albeit in a very friendly way. I remember an incident, when the two of us were going downtown, and he suddenly had to stop at the post office. He wrote out a big cheque for a society for the prevention of cruelty against animals. And the day before he had declined an offer to get a bigger suite at the hotel because he didn't like the thought of spending so much money for himself. That's a very nice twist in the story, I think."
"(William Berger) was a guy who had everything. He was handsome, knew how to act. He could have gone all the way to the top. But he got mixed up with drugs. I got a couple of parts because he was busy or he was arrested. When I made that Crea film, Berger had just been arrested because somebody had left drugs in his place, on the Costa Amalfi. His wife died in prison. I didn't get along with him because he was too hippy or what they call it, and I'm square! I don't drink, I don't smoke, and that's the way it is...But I knew so many psychedelic sophisticates in the early 1950s in Paris, that I just have my problems with them."
"I can't remember how they did this effect [on 1977's Mannaja), but it looked awful! One of the girls said to me that I was made of steel because Maurizio dragged me through the rain with the rope around my neck. That was tough indeed. Poor Maurizio died some time after that in a tennis accident."
"(Laura Gemser) was a very quiet woman, très réservé, but not in a snobbish way. She was very, very lovely. I worked together with her again, on Aristide Massaccesi's RITORNO DALLA MORTE, a Frankenstein movie made in 1992. She worked as a costume designer. This was another instance where I said something wrong: I told her how terrible it was that Tinti was dead, him being such a nice man...She had to rush out of the room because she was overwhelmed by her feelings for Gabriele."
"A guy once told me, I didn't know you went to South America. I said, I've never been to South America. But I saw you in a film (EMANUELLE GLI ULTIMI CANNIBALI), with snakes and every damn thing...That was Croce Verde."
"The leading lady of this film (Yeti) happened to be Antonella Interlenghi, the daughter of Antonella Lualdi. The girl very obviously inherited her mother's beauty, but she had the silliest pseudonym I've ever heard. She called herself "Phoenix Grant". I mean, what kind of a name is this? It's just as if I called myself, say, Hyde Park Corner Montgomery. Or Hamburg Rommel, how about that?"
"Svenson taught me how to speak German in this film! I didn't know anything, and this guy, who used to be a Swedish ice-hockey player who went to Vietnam as a Marine, he stood there with me, coaching me things like `Bringen Sie die Gefangenen in mein Buro!' Williamson also was a very nice person. I had one wonderful scene in this movie, where I...I was outranking them, they are my prisoners, I walk in front of the prisoners, and I have to say something like, in a very contemptuous way: `Americans...Italians...Jews...Irish!' I felt like a traitor!"
"This was a wonderful role. I played a Sicilian baron. They had incredible locations, for instance this majestic castle, I couldn't believe how beautiful it was! We also shot a scene in Hadrian's Villa, in a place called Sanctuario di Ercole. I had a great costume - the costume designers also worked on Visconti's GATTOPARDO. It's a mystery to me why they wouldn't let the film out. It's terrible for an actor: You think you have a big break, then the film just rots on the shelf! Also, the director was a very likeable person, very calm on the set. A wonderful movie."
"(The Italian film industry) take a film like HEAT, with de Niro and Pacino, and they put it in 20 cinemas. Our Italian productions never get a chance here except for the real big ones. Dario Argento's new movie (The Stendhal Syndrome), look, it is shown in one lousy cinema! And then they complain that people don't see Italian movies? Fuck, in a city like Rome, with 3 million people, and so little Italian stuff! If the new Argento movie is in one cinema, and the cinema happens to be on the outskirts, who's gonna go there? That's why these films sink, because they aren't properly distributed, because nobody cares for them! That's a shame."
"I was supposed to wear this really great costume [on Il Brigante], beautiful white flannel trousers, a captain's cap, it looked marvellous, but right before shooting they had it changed and they told me to wear my own stuff instead. I felt rotten because it looked so cheap."
"That movie (Zombi Holocaust) was also shot in Croce Verde. Not exactly on the same spot as the Emanuelle movie, but very near. I particularly remember the lovely leading actress, Alessandra delli Colli, the wife of one the greatest Italian cameramen, Tonino delli Colli. There was also this great Japanese guy, who used to have real snakes curl up on his belly! He was incredible."
"I slipped out in the bathroom of a Parisian hotel and hit my head. I was in coma for about three days, and when I woke up, one half of my body was paralyzed."
"I remember that they had this wonderful effect for my demise [on 2020: Texas Gladiators], with my skull being cracked open by an axe. They had photos of this stunning effect made, but then decided to change it because they thought it was just too much."
"(Sean Connery) was the most conceited actor I've ever worked with! He is rich, successful and handsome...good Lord, why does he act that way? He doesn't want anybody near him! If there was anything or anybody that might have taken the eyes of the spectator off of him, he just went to the director and complained, as if he didn't already have enough screen time! Murray Abraham was so different, such a nice man...And there was one brilliant German or Austrian actor on this movie who looked like Falstaff, big, fat guy, a marvellous presence. Helmut Qualtinger was his name. He was terrific!"
"This midget, whose name was Domenico, once introduced me to a good-looking man who was something like his butler. One year later, the poor little man was found on a dumpheap outside of Rome. The young man had killed him, just a block away from this bar we're sitting in right now! Truth sometimes is stranger than fiction..."
"I always preferred those movies I would have a large role in. If I had to choose between a small movie with a big role and a big movie with a small role, I'd take the one with more screen time. It's not very satisfying for an actor to get work and then ending up on the cutting room floor."
"In all these years of recuperaion, I over-used one half of my body. So, when I did a short sprint on the beach, I just fell and couldn't get back on my feet again. In the bad time following I was helped by my two wonderful brothers, who got me into a hospital and assisted me in many ways, God bless them. As it turned out, the hip bones of the side of my body which had been overly stressed were severely damaged, and so I had a very hard time after that."
"Old age isn't so bad when you consider the alternative."
"Love is the one emotion actors allow themselves to believe. 1"
"In love, we have to dare everything if we really love. 1"
"I knew everything and received everything. But real happiness, is giving. 1"
"I do very well three things: my job, stupidities and children. 1"
"I like to be loved like I love myself. 1"
"I don't really have the fear of death. I think to life. 1"
"You believe in God, then you don't believe anymore and when you have a big problem, you pray anyway.1"
"Jean-Marie Le Pen is a friend. He is dangerous for the political set because he's the only one who's sincere. He says out loud what many people think deep down, and what the politicians refrain from saying because they are either too demagogic or too chicken. Le Pen, with all his faults and qualities, is probably the only one who thinks about the interests of France before his own. 1"
"I’m not really a model. When I’m doing a photo shoot, I’m not playing a part. I’m just trying to be myself."
"Current obsession: Finding some used pack of 665 Polaroid film. It’s a black and white film with a positive and negative at the same time!! I’ve been an amateur photographer since my teens. Before digital killed it all, I loved using this great film in my rare Konica Instant Press camera."
"I love music. My secret dream has always been to be a jazz musician. I tried the saxophone for a year or two when I was younger, but unfortunately I had to face the fact that I was not really talented !"
"Biggest regret: Being compelled to stop my cinema studies to work as an actor. Even though I’m so passionate about acting today, after high school I was so eager to become a filmmaker. Still in my mind today..."
"Paris or New York? Both. Being raised in Paris, I dream of New York, but if I had been raised in New York, I would dream of Paris."
"Best part of autumn: Snow and ski time approaching. … Half of my family comes from the French Alps. As a child, I almost skied before I walked!"
"I wasn’t directly connected to Marty. It’s the Chanel people who phoned me saying they were interested in working with me on a campaign. We had a lot of discussions about it. At the time, they hadn’t chosen a director. One day, they came to me with the idea of asking Martin Scorsese and of course I said, ‘That’s a great idea. I would be the happiest man in the world to work with him.” So that’s how we ended up working together. I pinched myself on the set every day—“Yup. I’m not dreaming.” [Laughs] It was really great because Chanel gave Marty and me total freedom. He works so precisely and you can see that his team loves him so much that they work really hard. Marty knows exactly what he wants, how he’s going to get what he wants, and knows when he has it. This shoot only lasted 4 to 5 days."
"I think one really memorable experience for me was on a film called Strayed by André Téchiné, a great filmmaker in France. That was an experience where I learned the most because he wouldn’t leave me alone, even for a second, between takes. [Laughs] He was really focused on his actors and that was really wonderful. I was really young at the time and that was a really important film for me."
"It was terrifying. When they asked me if I wanted to do this project, I refused many times before finally agreeing to it. I didn’t think it would be a good idea to pick up this role after Anthony Hopkins because he did the most amazing job in creating this character. Also, working on this role with a French accent was a bit awkward. It was meeting with the director, Peter Webber, that really influenced my decision because he was really witty and had interesting thoughts on how he would make it. I really liked his first film, Girl with the Pearl Earring. Also, being able to work abroad with an American and British crew, shoot it in English, and work on such an amazing and mythical character was what convinced me to give it a try. It wasn’t easy."
"I think I was around 17 years old when I had my first parts in feature films and that’s when I really started to get interested in all of cinema, not just acting. After high school, I went to film school for 2 years. That was a great moment for me because I discovered a lot of directors from around the world and a lot of different types of genre. It would’ve taken me a long time to make these kinds of discoveries on my own without school, so I’m really thankful. At the time, I wanted to express myself with my own films as a director, but as I was getting more and more offers as an actor, I had to stop those studies to focus on acting. I feel trapped now because I really enjoy acting. But it’s true, I wake up every morning with this idea stuck in my mind that I want to write and direct my own film one day. As I work more and more on different sets, I see how hard it is to be a director. It’s insane the amount of work and confidence that goes into it. I’m so respectful of filmmakers and I admire what they do. I hope that one day I’ll find the right subject and the confidence to try it. I’m still young."
"Chanel is the greatest fashion house in France, but I was hesitant when they first asked me. I thought it could be risky for me to do a fashion campaign. I'm not like Brad Pitt or Gerard Depardieu, who already have established themselves as actors - I'm just starting. I didn't want to be known as a Chanel model, over an actor, but I told myself it was the perfect project. Chanel is classy and highly respected. I like being associated with a fragrance more than I think I would with clothes, it's more abstract you know?"
"Marion Cotillard. I'd say... Even if it was quite brief, we shared a few scenes on Xavier Dolan's film [It's Only the End of the World]. She gives a lot to her scene partner."
"I don't often use the word pride. Even if sometimes the feeling is there, I can't quite admit it to myself, I try to keep humility. But looking back, I think I'm pretty proud to be where I am today. Especially when I think back to the shy and withdrawn child that I could have been. I suffered, like surely many children, from a lack of confidence. This is also why my journey began by chance, and why it was arranged in a somewhat winding way."
"Maybe I'm lying to myself, but jealousy is a feeling that I think is totally foreign to me. In this environment, however, the competition is strong — seeing a role pass is sometimes a disappointment — but I would never draw jealousy from it directed towards another actor. On the other hand, I would have liked to have other talents. Like becoming a musician. Pianist, to be precise: I would have loved to know how to play the piano, although I have no gift for it, I have already tried, it's a waste of time (laughs). But all artistic gifts make me dream, like painting..."
"Moreover, like everyone, I think, injustices make me angry, even if I am not attached to a particular cause, that I am not campaigning for an association. Sometimes I blame myself, because in my position, I should probably be able to speak for something. But marking my choice is difficult for me. From global warming to child abuse to poverty, my head is spinning. You know, I'm a bit of a nihilist, or at least I define myself as an entropy: for me, the mess in our world is only getting worse. Yes, I know, I say this when I had a child, which is still a huge message of hope. It's a paradox, I know."
"I am one of the actors who think that inactivity can be beneficial, it allows you to allow yourself to let go, to go deeper into yourself, to question yourself and to refocus."
"Many people talk about this scar, and a few directors before [Peter Webber] were seduced, if I can say so, by this scar. I'm going to phone the surgeon and thank him for it. [laughs] I was six years old and a dog was sleeping in a garden, and I just jumped on his back like I would have done on a horse. And so he just hit me with his claws, and that made a nice little scar. But it looks like a dimple. It's nice, and it might help, sometimes, to express feelings in my acting. I'm not really conscious about this because I can't really see my face when I'm acting."
"I am very thankful to the dog. All of the directors love this scar."
"I have to thank my surgeon who did a great job. It [his scar] almost looks like a dimple. When I was maybe 6 years old, I stayed at my parents’ friend’s country house in France and they had this huge dog. The dog was sleeping on a tree and I jumped on his back like I was riding a horse or something. The dog wasn’t aggressive or mean, but it was just totally surprised when I did that and he tore up my cheek with his big paw. But it’s true, maybe the scar helped me in some way because it adds something to my face. It’s very interesting because it’s asymmetrical. It’s like a dimple that I only have on one side of my face. Many directors have used it for scenes in their films. The most memorable one was in Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s A Very Long Engagement where I’m kissing Audrey Tautou and she runs her finger across the scar. [Laughs]"
"It's a huge upheaval. What was of extreme importance yesterday seems trivial today. Fatherhood brings you back to something very concrete, fills a void you weren't necessarily aware of, gives you a reason to live."
"I love living intense situations, which leave their mark and enrich existence. The birth of a child totally changes the perception of the future. With my son Orso, a Corsican name, like his mother Gaëlle Pietri, I filled a void I didn't know existed."
"Since I became a dad, my life has been turned out completely differently. From then on, I try to devote time and energy to my son. On set, I am far from him physically but also in my head. Between these periods, I therefore devote all the time he needs to him."
"I'd never met him before the film. I thought he was extremely cooperative, very sweet, unbelievably professional and he has a great face for the camera. He is cinegenic and very magnetic. He reminds me of a young Alain Delon."
"I'm in a state of shock today over the loss of Gaspard Ulliel. I had the chance to work with him once briefly, and I was so impressed by his dedication and his intelligence. He loved the cinema, and I know that he would have been an interesting filmmaker if he'd lived to realize his dream. It's just heartbreaking."
"It is impossible, insane, and so painful to even think of writing these words. Your discreet laughter, your watchful eye. Your scar. Your talent. Your listening. Your whispers, your kindness. All the features of your person were in fact born of a sparkling sweetness. It is your whole being that has transformed my life, a being that I loved deeply, and that I will always love. I can’t say anything else, I’m exhausted, stunned by your departure."
"Gaspard, so much light and so much love emanated from you. How I loved knowing you. And I vibrated so much by your side. You were and you will remain, by what you leave us which is so immense and so deep, a marvel of a man. It’s such a great pain to know you’re gone. I’m thinking of all those you loved and who will always love you. Travel in peace."
"We grew up side by side. I admired you. You have been a wonderful partner. It’s very hard out here, Gaspard. For many people. We find it difficult to realize."
"Shocked and saddened to hear about the death of Gaspard Ulliel at such a young age in a skiing accident. I have such fond memories of working with him all those years ago on Hannibal Rising. Rest in peace, dear friend."
"It's immensely sad, so much kindness, talent, modesty, beauty in one single man. It's hard."
"Gaspard belonged to this new generation of actors who were making tomorrow’s French cinema. He knew how to select his roles and shaped his career which filled every promise. Each appearance on the red carpet, from ‘La Princesse de Montpensier’ to ‘It’s Only The End of the World’ illustrated his presence, both discreet and full of kindness. He was equally brilliant and talented. He gave a lot and we’ll always remember him."
"Broken heart. Gaspard was benevolence and kindness. Beauty and talent. Thoughts to his family."
"Your smile. Gaspard. Of a rare gentleness and elegance… An extraordinary being. Gaspard, Gaspard forever."
"Nathalie Lévy: You directed Gaspard Ulliel in It's Only the End of the World, and you wrote an intense message after the news of his death..."
"I didn't have a lot of scenes with him, but I remember we shared a scene or two... We had a lot of fun shooting it together. He was a lovely person and very focused, when it came to acting, he was very serious about his job. I was very sad to learn of his death."
"Xavier Dolan: I think of him all the time, actually... I think... It's hard to conceive it.. It takes a long time to accept this situation... to accept his departure... It's inconceivable... I often dream of him... I think of his family... his son... I think of his talent, his beauty... And I will talk about him tonight."
"Even if the script has changed a lot, we knew that if the character of Anton Mogart had to be played by a Frenchman, our choice would be Gaspard. He had the physique, but also certain skills like knowing how to ride a horse. [The two men met in 2011 during the Mediterranean Film Festival in Montpellier. The Egyptian filmmaker presented his film Cairo 678 there] He loved it. We spoke at that time and I knew I wanted to work with him."
"We met in 2011 at the Montpellier festival. It was the very first screening in France of my film Cairo 678. The screening ended with a standing ovation. Gaspard was in the room, he loved it and we talked. When I saw Mogart's character, I reached out to him and offered him the part. I always felt he had everything Hollywood needed. He had the physique, he had the talent, he was fit, he rode horses and he did extreme stuff. He was perfect for Moon Knight. I was one of the only ones to know how much he meant in French cinema. I was stunned by his humility and down-to-earth side. It looked like his very first day on a set. I said to him: 'I am sure that the fans and the studio will want to see you again'."
"It's still such a shock. It's the true definition of a tragedy when I think of Gaspard. He was so friendly and warm. We had a week together where we filmed this one scene, and he had a really quiet demeanor to him. But when you'd talk to him, he was really funny, and he was really committed to every moment that he was in. It was fun to work off of him because he gave so much. He spoke about his family a lot, especially his son. So my love goes out to them."
"I met Gaspard 10 years ago. We talked, and I always felt like he was Hollywood material. He had everything — he had the looks and talent. When I got this job and we had his character, Anton Mogart, I contacted him and at once he wanted to be in it. Although he is a legend in France, on the Moon Knight set he was so humble that it felt like he was acting for the first time. He did such a great job that I felt like he was going to get called back one day by Marvel… it's such a loss. I can't even believe that we're talking about him in past tense because he was full of life. He was beautiful as a person and the only positive thing from everything that happened is that he’s going to live through his films as a legend forever."
"Gaspard was amazing. I didn't know him well, worked with him for four weeks, give or take, but he was a wonderful human being, an amazing actor, and it’s a massive loss. It was a pleasure and an honor to work with him and absolutely sad to lose him."
"We only had 3 or 4 days with Gaspard. The shooting took place on a wild set where there were many horses and clouds of mosquitoes... He shot almost shirtless during the scene. So he was being eaten alive by mosquitoes. Like all of us. But especially him in particular. And despite that, I never heard him complain. He arrived like a pro, he was so generous, so adorable and very sensitive."
"English was like a second language to him. It was a real challenge to do this job, to end up with a team that doesn't speak your language, but he really managed to connect with everyone, he was very excited to be a part of this project. His passing broke our hearts."
"He was really generous and so funny. He made me laugh a lot several times on the set. You could tell he really loved what he was doing. And I quickly saw all the commitment he put into this project. I send all my love to his family, I know he had a son he talked about very often. His death is a disaster!"
"His death is a tragedy. Gaspard was one of the best actors of his generation. His incarnation of Yves Saint-Laurent is, in my opinion, unsurpassable. It is an honor to resume his role and continue what he started. The project is magnificent, and the team, really formidable. Everyone welcomed me with great generosity. I'm excited."
"His death was so violent… An earthquake for his family, for the profession. It's special to take on a role in these conditions. He's an actor I loved. I knew him a little bit. It is an honor to continue what he started. I don't think I would have done it if director Xavier Giannoli, Vincent Lindon and the whole team hadn't welcomed me with open arms. They welcomed me. Not a day goes by that I don't think of Gaspard. Intelligent, precise, very cinephile, cultured, I continue to talk about him in the present. I can't realize."
"Tonight I wanted to pay a tribute to my friend, to our friend, Gaspard. I have chosen to do so in the form of a letter, which is as follows:"
"In our enigmatic and often difficult relationships with the world, Buddhism offers a vocabulary, a certain number of conceptual and operational tools which allow us to dialogue. And this in very current areas such as overpopulation, ecology, conflict resolution, the role of modern science and its understanding. In more speculative areas, it also provides us with approaches, relations, always very practical, concerning questions about death, fear, suffering. Our traditions don't always have the answers, or perhaps they have become muddled..."
"Without a doubt, by his personality, at once warm, deep, laughing and obstinate, as well as by the exceptional events which made up his life, he largely influenced the development of Buddhism as a whole in the 20th century, making it clearer, more accessible, closer to humanity. Not knowing if his political fight will achieve the goal he seeks, he lives in the movement, and in the consciousness of this movement. He accepts the idea that he may be the last Dalai Lama. If, one day, the Tibetan people no longer want this institution, he will retire, he says, to a convent, without any possessions, to end his days there like an old monk bent over his staff. And in the end, he adds with a laugh, maybe it’s not bad."
"I find that violence is very ambiguous in movies. For example, some films claim to be antiwar, but I don't think I've really seen an antiwar film. Every film about war ends up being pro-war."