Phrases

01. I’ve always loved the idea of changing myself, wearing costumes and disguises. It takes you back to being a kid, to dressing up.

02. People pretend to be nice, people pretend to be smooth, and polite and everything, but this is only an appearance, because the way we’re built as human beings is only in paradox and contradictions.

03. Perfection is not just about control, it is also about letting go.

04. The only person standing in your way is you.

05. Good guys need to be a little dirty otherwise they’re just boring.

06. You can’t escape from what you are.

07. It’s now or never. This is simple to say, but then to live like that is not easy at all, I’m sorry. You have to be aware enough so that you can see situations as they pass in front of you and be able to catch the instant, whatever it is. Many times, you just don’t see the moment when you were yawning and then it’s too late.

08. I’m more attracted to the bad guys. Why? Because in real life, I don’t know any good guys. I know okay guys. I know polite guys. I know people who can control themselves.

09. Women? I’m still working on the subject. I haven’t finished my studies. I would say I’m so happy that they’re around. This is the salt and pepper of life. This is what makes me wake up in the morning – even more than work, really.

10. I always compare human beings to animals. It’s a nice way to figure out who they are.

11. Neither of us are workaholics. I think the key thing is to accept that if you only exist through what you do, then you become what you do, and this is very wrong.

12. I come from an acting family, my father was an actor, and I had to fight my way and just create my own identity.

13. I always had the sense of being in the spotlight, being on stage, being looked at.

14. They say the day you lose your parents, you start to look like them.

15. I don’t really shop any more. I only do it when I have to. I think it is very overrated.

16. I used to be more self-conscious about style because when you’re younger, you want to exist, you want to show everything you do.

17. I love French style from the Thirties and Forties. French movie stars like Jean Gabin and Yves Montand had so much natural, effortless style.

18. The minute I started being recognised, I became much more discreet.

19. People look up to Jacques Mesrine as if he were a Robin Hood, stealing from the rich, but he never gave anything back to anybody.

20. Cinema is entertainment, and people go to the movies because they want to feel good and forget about everything.

21. I’m an actor, that’s what I do every day. Dressing up is part of my job. But whatever you wear you should always be yourself: never go totally with the fashion but use what there is available to be an individual.

22. If the guy behind the camera is not good, the pictures are bad. It’s still you, and it’s the same lines and everything, but it doesn’t work.

23. Yes. The way people behave, the paradoxes, the contradictions. All these things we have to live with and still pretend that everything is only black or white. That, I think, is the most interesting thing in human nature. The fact that we have to do one thing and pretend something else. That’s when it becomes very interesting. If you can literally speak the way you feel, then it’s not interesting anymore. It’s when you have to lie that it becomes interesting.

24. The thing is, as an actor, I get bored a little bit. I love to act. And between action and cuts, when you work for somebody great, it’s wonderful and I still love it. The moment where you create, that instant is still magic to me. But, all the rest, I get bored with it – all the waiting, and the fact that you have to make appearances, that you have to share your life.

25. When somebody is talking to you about something terrible on set with lines, and you believe what he says, sometimes it gives a strange vibe, because you wonder when that person is talking if he’s talking about something that really happened to him and he’s using the character.

26. It was like a dream to me to suddenly get into the market with that kind of movie, like La Haine. It actually created my identity as an actor, that thing.

27. And now I have a big house, nice clothes and I travel in first class and I love it, so maybe it’s time to enjoy being a star.

28. To work with somebody you love makes filming faster, more fun.

29. There is this idea that its very different from the French point of view to work in America blah, blah, blah. But I think its different from one person to the other, not from one country to the other.

30. When you have a bunch of scripts that you have to read, the less you have, the better it is, because otherwise, everything is already planned and I think that’s a terrible feeling.

31. I’m producing more, but I think to direct, one has to have a burning desire, and that’s not me. I’d rather do something else.

32. I’m a little angry in life.

33. I wanted to be an actor to act, and now, being an actor, you have to dress up, you have to be nice, you have to be smart, you have to be sexy, you have to be ready.

34. I wear a lot of wigs as Jacques Mesrine. He’d wear multiple wigs and take them off one at a time to rob three banks in one hour.

35. I did direct two short movies. I learned many things, and one of the things I learned was that I am not a director. It has to be visceral, and it’s not for me. I feel much more comfortable acting.

36. I liked the idea of working with Jean Reno and Mathieu Kassovitz; there was something logical for me. I thought it was a good thing to do. Actually, The Crimson Rivers movie was a big success, and it was one of the biggest successes I ever had in France.

37. I worked with young directors all my life, only young directors.

38. La Haine – first of all, it was the story of friendship. I was very close with Mathieu Kassovitz; he was somebody I met in the nights of Paris. And the hip-hop scene and all that… You know, it was very much about doing our own thing, and some of the subject matter was so close to what we knew and the people we were hanging out with.

39. If kids really made all the parents better, there wouldn’t be crazy kids in the world.

40. I really like romantic comedies and light movies and everything but I think – I don’t know where it comes from – but when you’re doing violent movies, you’re closer to reality.

41. People are more familiar with pictures of Jacques Mesrine that had been taken of him at the end of his life, when he was doing a lot of things with the media. So there’s an iconic figure that people know, and I had to eventually get there; otherwise I guess the audience would have been disappointed. My only problem is that I’m a skinny guy, and it’s very hard for me to put on weight.

42. To me, Sheitan movie is the answer to all the problems we have in France concerning immigration. That is a fake problem; people can actually work together and do something very interesting out of it.

43. I have a huge relationship with Brazil; it’s almost a love affair, I would say. And to me, to introduce that specific martial art like capoeira in Hollywood movies was something important to me.

44. Working with David Cronenberg or Darren Aronofsky or even Steven Soderbergh isn’t really like a typical Hollywood movie. These are true artists, and have a certain amount of freedom when they work, and they’re more like independent filmmakers making their way through big studios. I still don’t feel like I’ve been part of the stereotypical Hollywood system.

45. I didn’t want to be part of that tradition of French cinema that wasn’t really watched by the people of my age. I didn’t really care to be in the last André Téchiné or Claude Chabrol movie, even though some of them are really interesting. For me, it was much more important to work with Mathieu Kassovitz or Gaspar Noé. It was for me a question of identity.

46. I have a tendency to think that that stereotype of American movies and Hollywood movies doesn’t exist. Of course you have the studios that have a very hard policy upon their artists, but then I haven’t really been doing any real Hollywood movie yet.

47. Steven Soderbergh really likes Irréversible, that’s about all I can tell you. About the making, well, it was a very particular situation, because those people all know each other, and they’re all big stars. I felt like the little French guy, really. And I was very flattered to be called on that, of course, but I felt like if I didn’t find something to be a little original, different, particular in the movie, I would just disappear.

48. You usually never know what you’re going to do when you’re making a movie.

49. When you see violence in movies in general, it’s very quick and painless, which isn’t what it’s like.

50. My father is best known for his light comedies, and Im best known for crazy bad guys with short tempers.

51. Blood, especially fake, and guns, this is bullshit. It works in the movie, but on set it doesn’t work for me.

52. It’s always interesting to see a director trying different things, and on top of it, doing it right each and almost every time.

53. Cronenberg’s a lot of fun, and that a lot of people don’t know watching his movies. He doesn’t take himself seriously. He’s still reinventing himself.

54. I think American audiences like gangster movies. It’s part of the culture.

55. The idea of telling a story in reverse destabilises your ordinary moral reactions. That’s one of the points of art – to challenge your preconceptions.

56. I have learned that acting is not about beauty.

57. Coming from Paris, I’d really like to live in Rio. I think it’s gotten better. It’s not as violent. The economy is better. The middle class is rising.

58. I was thinking of going to London drama schools or to New York, because France didn’t accommodate the things I wanted to do in film.

59. I think I’m actually more vulnerable than people imagine.

60. I really enjoy being an actor!

61. I grew up watching ‘Raging Bull.

62. I think life is short, and you can’t spend time doing things just to be on set to reassure yourself that people are not going to forget about you.