Actors From France

"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."

"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."

"The probation officers quoted a pair of psychiatrists as saying that Mr. Polanski was not “a pedophile” or a “sexual deviate.”"

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"Whenever I get happy, I always have a terrible feeling."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"My films are the expression of momentary desires. I follow my instincts, but in a disciplined way."

"Cinema should make you forget you are sitting in a theater."

"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.’"

"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."

"‘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.’"

"I can only say that whatever my life and work have been, I'm not envious of anyone — and this is my biggest satisfaction."

"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."

"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."

"I want people to go to the movies. I am the man of the spectacle. I'm playing."

"I never made a film which fully satisfied me."

"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."

"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!"

"It's easy to direct while acting — there’s one less person to argue with."

"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."

"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."

"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'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."

"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.""

"It's weird. I always had the premonition that Sharon belonged to me just for a little while."

"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."

""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!"

"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)"

"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.)"

"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."

"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."

"When the seagulls follow the trawler, it's because they think sardines will be thrown into the sea."

"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."

"I have spent more than half a lifetime trying to express the tragic moment."

"To communicate through silence is a link between the thoughts of man."

"Never get a mime talking. He won’t stop."

"In silence and movement you can show the reflection of people."

"Music and silence... combine strongly because music is done with silence, and silence is full of music."

"Music conveys moods and images. Even in opera, where plots deal with the structure of destiny, it’s music, not words, that provides power."

"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."

"Do not the most moving moments of our lives find us all without words?"

"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.""

"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."