Actresses From France

"I started to watch the ocean. I was not looking at it like I used to; it became like a grave."

"My family history is made of migration; it’s something that’s part of my own complexity."

"As a mixed [-race] girl, there’s always a visible and invisible side of you; there’s a place you inhabit and place you desert,” she says. “How does the place that you don’t live in influence you?"

"Catherine Deneuve seems to have been made for cinema, and cinema for her. She IS French cinema. She seems to be getting more adventurous every year."

"I try not to think that I am acting, but that I am the person. And instead of giving the audience your fantasies completely, I think it is more interesting to give them a place where they can imagine things instead of knowing everything; but maybe that is very French."

"There is no such thing as a Hollywood career for a French actress today. You can come here and do films like Juliette Binoche, but you can't come here and have a career. It's because you don’t sign with studios anymore. I remember when I did Umbrellas of Cherbourg, I signed a contract with Fox. At the time, actresses would be proposed different scripts because they had to use you. Sure it had some inconvenience, but actors made films they might not ever make if they weren't under contract. Now, only individual producers choose and actors are left on their own."

"I think that women who have to deal with a big amount of people have to compartmentalize themselves. You have to have an attitude of strength in a way because you are supposed to direct and organize the life of people in that way, aloof. It doesn't mean much, it's just an attitude."

"When you're not working and you're just living, you forget and all of a sudden something happens to remind you that you're an actor. I'm not always the nicest person to meet, because I forget very easily that I'm an actress when I'm not working. I live very normally, I go out with my friends, we go to the movies, I queue, we go to restaurants. Then if something happens to remind me that I'm an actress then I become a little different and things become a little heavy. I like the advantages; I know it's not right but I like being famous when it's convenient for me and completely anonymous when it's not."

"I can be very critical on myself and on other people; when I work, I can be very demanding. But to direct... I admire directors so much, I find them incredible: they manage such a huge number of people of different characters, think of the money involved. And they have to make decisions all the time, they have to answer all the time. I think it's incredible. No, no, I wouldn't be able to do that. I imagine that you have to forget about what the project represents sometimes because otherwise you become a monster. It's incredible the amount of responsibility and power you have. I wouldn't want that."

"It's the social networks that prevent people from dreaming any more about stars. Their private life is displayed constantly on social networks; and some even post private pictures of themselves. I find it a pity. Being a star entails glamour and secrecy; it's hard to keep any degree of mystery nowadays."

"[On wearing clothes made by the Yves Saint Laurent brand] You are more aware of what you wear. You feel totally different. When you live in public, it gives you an attitude that helps you be confident with people you don’t know."

"There's a very big challenge in the United States when it comes to ageing, especially for actors and actresses. I'm not saying it's easy in Europe, but in Europe we accept more readily to make movies with women in leading roles who are 40, 45, 50 years old. That is still very rarely seen in the US."

"I think it's very tiring to be Catherine Deneuve each day"

"It was a film about character but also about actresses too, and she is the most important French actress for 50 years. When she accepted, it was very easy to build a cast around her."

"She's not an icon in life. She knows things, and she's very clever. I think she's very shy. She tries to protect herself a lot."

"I'd like to be an American Catherine Deneuve. She plays beautiful, sensitive, deep parts with a little bit of intelligence behind them."

"I don't care when I was born, if I'm 50, 60 or 70. It's important that I am alive."

"Compilations, to me, are embarrassing. To bring out a compilation, to me, is to say, "Look. I've got no new material so please buy this. I need money to pay the rent." I think it's very embarrassing. And that is very annoying because the record company owns all those titles and they don't ask me for my advice. They just decide to release "the best of" compilations and they put out a lot of very bad quality music. There are a couple of good titles but the rest are just tracks to fill out the album. And they know very well that they can't rely on me promoting them because I won't promote such records."

"People only know me as a celebrity and don't realize how much more important art is to me than makeup and set costumes. Show business pays the rent, but painting is my only true passion, so I define myself as a painter who works in show business. Art is a kind of therapy to me, thanks to which I can interpret my feelings. An empty canvas before my eyes is synonymous with the absolute freedom of expression."

"The Germans told me "We're going to conquer the world!" and I don't regret working with a German record company at all, because for my career it was great, but they wanted to control me, direct me and restrict me. They wanted absolute discipline and that's not the life for me, so after a few years of that I wanted out."

"In Italy I'm big because they're all so sex-obsessed. In Germany I succeeded because they've been waiting for someone like Marlene Dietrich to come along ever since the war. I played on their need for a drunken, nightclubbing vamp. And I've won the gays, who are crucial because they have all the best discos, entirely because of the extraordinary legends about me."

"I knew nothing when I first met him. He taught me to see things through his eyes. Dalí was my teacher. He let me use his brushes, his paint and his canvas, so that I could play around while he was painting for hours and hours in the same studio. Surrealism was a good school for me. Listening to Dalí talk was better than going to any art school."

"I'd grown up thinking I was ugly, ugly, ugly. I was much too tall, I was much too skinny, I was flat-chested, I had my mother's Asian eyes and cheekbones so I looked foreign compared to all my girlfriends, my mouth was too big and my teeth were too big so I never smiled. And then Françoise Hardy had her breakthrough in France and everything suddenly changed. Before her you were supposed to look like Brigitte Bardot, blonde, curvy and busty. But I was about twenty when people started telling me "You know what, you look a little like Françoise Hardy, you could be a model" and then out of the blue this famous woman, the great Catherine Harlé turns up. By sheer accident she happened to see me in the street in Paris and asked me if I wanted to be a fashion model and I thought she was joking! And she said "No, no, no, you're exactly the type of girl we're looking for" and all of a sudden all of these flaws, all the things I'd been so ashamed of, became my greatest assets. By sheer accident, as most things in my career."

"I hate to spread rumours: but what else can one do with them?"

"Quand on dit "je t'aime", on veut dire "aime-moi"."

"La vie m'est insupportable, pardonnez-moi."

"J'ai traversé la vie sans la regarder. Je sais ce qu'est ma vie. Mon mari, c'est le public. Les chansons, ce sont mes enfants."

"Je crois que mon rêve a toujours été de devenir quelqu'un. De réussir dans la vie, dans le spectacle, je ne savais pas exactement quoi, mais c'était ou chanter ou jouer la comédie, ou faire du cinéma ou du théâtre... c'était le spectacle."

"Je n'étais pas une femme, mais une industrie de la chanson."

"I don’t believe in doing everything and being mediocre at all of them. I believe in being good at one thing."

"I have been very happy, very rich, very beautiful, much adulated, very famous, and very unhappy."

"All these animals are put in cages, never see the sun or grass, and they leave this hell only to go to the slaughter-house. For me intensive breeding is a sign of human degeneration. If one can find that acceptable, then we humans have lost all moral value. ... [How long have you been a vegetarian?] Since 1962, when I went on French television to denounce conditions of animal slaughter. That is when I became aware of the horror of factory farming, live transports and the killings of farm animals. I have always been sensitive to animal distress but from then on I refused to be involved in such inhuman industrial deaths."

"A kiss can be a comma, a question mark, or an exclamation point."

"I am a follower of hyaluronic acid – always in small doses of course – to fill wrinkles and fine lines."

"The newspapers were saying, 'You have AIDS.' They actually said I was dead. I just threw myself into my work when the whispering campaign turned really ugly. I think Camille saved me. I felt incredibly paranoid, just as Camille did. And do you know? I was able to use that in doing Camille's scenes. It made them better."

"I like films that rest in the memory so I try and choose parts which have some kind of social or emotional force. For me, being an actress is not just a profession but a profession of faith."

"Obviously I think I've been very lucky, to start off with such a good break, and to have a film that not only was a hit but where I didn't have to compromise … in terms of doing a mindless movie — it was also a movie, for me as an actor which was very fulfilling…"

"The clown company played by Atul Kumar, Kalki Koechlin, Sujay Saple, Neil Bhoopalam, Namit Das and Puja Sarup are outstanding in their role[s]. This is just outstanding casting by the director and The Company Theatre."

"Dev.D is a tryst with milestone cinema, reminiscent of Baz Luhrmann's Shakespeare-shaken-and-stirred in Romeo and Juliet. Kashyap, however, gets even more adventurous and adds a progressive flourish to both the plot and the characters which are played to perfection by the three lead players. If Mahi and Kalki are riveting new finds, assured of a long innings in cinema, then Abhay Deol adds a whole new meaning to the term "Unconventional Hero"."

"Enter Chanda, the multilingual call girl who can seduce in Hindi, Tamil, English and French. With her bee-stung lips, unusual face and refreshing lack of acting guile, Kalki Koechlin imbues the part with a touching fragility."

"It's all a part of this world where we're all kind of mixing a lot, and… in that way we're all a bit confused about who we are, where we belong, where's home, and … who is important to us…"

"I think the chemistry we have is that we both think very dark when it comes to stories."

"I wanted to kind of make sure that people know that I'm here to stay, because this is home, and I am born here — I'm not a foreigner in that sense."

"Quand même"

"A symphony of golden flutes and muted strings; silver dawn lit by lambent lightnings, soft stars and a clear-cut crescent moon."

"She is the Muse of Poetry herself. Neither intelligence nor artistry have anything to do with it. She is guided by a secret instinct. She recites as the nightingale sings, as the wind sighs, as water murmurs, as Lamartine once wrote."

"There are five kinds of actresses: bad actresses, fair actresses, good actresses, great actresses— and then there is Sarah Bernhardt"

"Chicago people are very fond of Madame Bernhardt. They want her to get a divorce and settle down with them."

"Life is short, even for those who live a long time, and we must live for the few who know and appreciate us, who judge and absolve us, and for whom we have the same affection and indulgence. The rest I look upon as a mere crowd, lively or sad, loyal or corrupt, from whom there is nothing to be expected but fleeting emotions, either pleasant or unpleasant, which leave no trace behind them. We ought to hate very rarely, as it is too fatiguing; remain indifferent to a great deal, forgive often and never forget."

"I am so superstitious that if I had arrived when there was no sunshine I should have been wretched and most anxious until after my first performance. It is a perfect torture to be superstitious to this degree, and, unfortunately for me, I am ten times more so now than I was in those days, for besides the superstitions of my own country, I have, thanks to my travels, added to my stock all the superstitions of other countries. I know them all now, and in any critical moment of my life, they all rise up in armed legions for or against me. I cannot walk a single step or make any movement or gesture, sit down, go out, look at the sky or ground, without feeling some reason for hope or despair, until at last, exasperated by the trammels put upon my actions by my thought, I defy all superstitions and just act as I want to act."