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I'm an adaptable nomad. I love Paris, I've been living in Los Angeles and New York since 1990. I love London, too. My roots are inside of me.
Never take no for an answer. It took me 20 years between the time I wrote my first screenplay and the time I actually got money to direct a movie.
For Europeans a president having an affair, especially in France, is a joke. No one cares, it would never bring this kind of trouble to a country.
I don't want to go to the Bahamas on holiday. I hate islands. I want to go to Brittany, where it's cold and raining, and there's nothing fancy about it.
Some films do portray women in their 40s well, and some other films don't. Some films are written by women, so maybe there's a little more accuracy there.
I love making movies. I love writing. I love acting. I love it, and I feel really blessed to be able to actually make a living with something I love doing.
Too many women throw themselves into romance because they're afraid of being single, then start making compromises and losing their identity. I won't do that.
I love acting and I still want to do it, but I've such an instinct for directing, it's something that comes naturally to me. It's why I'm here on this planet.
I think the first sign of friendship is a manifestation of how you separate from your parents and try to find a new family on your own. It's the first sign of growing.
Whether it's friendship or love. The essence of is two people trying to share something. When I think of how I met my best friends, it was always like love at first sight.
I've had this opportunity to get some of my financing out of Europe, which has helped tremendously, so I'm not completely dependent on the studio system or on U.S. financing.
I had to trick people into giving me money for my first film. Making a romantic comedy is easier and more expected from a woman than it is to make a drama about a Japanese warrior.
I love the acting process. What I don't like is what's around it. The auditions and being rejected every other day. The look thing. That you have to lose weight, that you have to do Botox.
We didn’t want to disrupt the creative process. We have the chance to make the films we want because the films are not expensive. It’s very rare to be able to do that. It’s completely pure.
You're never totally sure. I shouldn't say that because you have to pretend you're completely self-secure all the time. But, the truth is, I know what I'm doing. I think I know what I'm doing.
I'm a very direct person and, sometimes, when I want something, I will push it until I get it. But, it's OK. It's not as bad as some people. When I have an idea in my head, I'm pretty stubborn.
A lot of new American directors have had mentors who have given them advice. And some of them have had the way paved for them by huge Hollywood directors who saw a younger version of themselves.
My dad has always been such a great dad, and he's brought so much culture to my life. He dragged me to see every single movie at the cinématheque as a kid. I saw everything from Star Wars to Bergman.
I have a few other films in my life where I'm not attached and for a long time it was too complicated. Now it's starting to change because other actresses actually want to work with me, which is great.
Our society is so much about fidelity being this thing that's sacred, and people are miserable. They're suicidal. It brings more depression than anything else on earth, probably. Sorry to say that, guys.
I wasn't born an artist. I was really good in science as a kid. I probably shouldn't have been an artist because I'm much more interested in science. But I was raised by artists. I can't really escape it.
I didn't really fit with other kids. I had problems in school all my life and problems with authority. But my parents never did drugs or anything. They just believed in freedom in the best sense of the word.
I don't know any woman in France who doesn't talk to firemen and smile at them, because they're always so sweet, and they're wearing those tight pants. Even my dad looks at their ass when they walk down the street!
I make these little films. I'm just a working person. I just study people a little bit more. It's more sociological, and it's funny anyway - not that serious. It's not like false humility. I just take it for what it is.
The way I work is that I never let people do an assembly. I don't like it because it shapes the film in a way that I can't really control. To me, editing is making the film and it's a huge process and editors are under-rated.
Maybe I would get the chance to be financed for a small romantic comedy, but a war movie by a 28-year-old woman about Japanese soldiers? No one was going to go for that. It's easy to just steal an idea because it's very safe.
I think anyone who has had a fight and who's a very good observer of the situation and people's behavior is capable of writing a fight. But you do start thinking about writing during the fights that you have with your partner.
In real life, when you speak with each other you overlap each other, so you can't fake that. Like especially when you have no cut. In a regular film when you want people to overlap you cut it that way. It's mixing and editing.
It's terrifying. Women make their first film, their second film, and then it's like a nightmare, right, to make the third or fourth? I mean, it's almost like men can have three films in a row that don't do that well and keep on going.
I would assume that there is a greater amount of joy for you in being able to write and help produce your own stuff and make a decent living, but not get rich versus always doing the other stuff that you don’t write, and make more money.
Performing is the hardest thing. Even though I've done it for so many years, it's still exposing yourself. You suddenly become extremely vulnerable when you're on camera. You're filmed and you're being observed. It's a bit of a violation each time.
Very quickly I realized that directing is a combination of things: It's visual, it's directing the actors, it's telling a story. And people don't always mention this part of directing, but it's also knowing how to really edit something into something that makes sense.
I think it's nice when everyone's happy. I'm that kind of person. But then sometimes you have people that are never happy, which also happened to me a little bit, people that always find ways to complain about everything. But if they're never happy, that's the way they are.
I don't like to be overly directing people either. I tell them what I want and I tell them when it's wrong. I tell them no, that's not what I want. I want it more like this or more like that. I'm pretty direct with everyone, and I treat everyone the same which might be good.
What's funny is that with my comedies I don't believe they're my best screenplays necessarily. They're just the ones that I wrote that I knew I could get financing, you know? I believe my other films could be better, but right now they're not being made. But they will eventually.
Men go out with me, we break up and then they get married. And later they call me to thank me for teaching them what love is. That I tought them to care and respect women. (...) I wanna kill them! Why didn't they ask me to marry them? I would've said no, but at least they could have asked.
I did a film that I shot in 24 hours that was self-financed for $5,000. It was a feature called Looking For Jimmy that I shot with a bunch of friends. I spent eight months editing because we had 24 hours of footage that made no sense and I learned a lot about directing while editing that film.
I've never had help from anyone, ever. I've never had this great director who saw themselves in me, because I'm a French woman in Hollywood. Who could identify with me as a successful director in Hollywood? Nobody. And the few people who could have been mentors, instead they just stole my ideas.
I'm comfortable wherever I am, and I can be anywhere and feel comfortable after three weeks. I adapt, and I'm like a chameleon. If a country doesn't have Internet, then I get used to not having the Internet. I could basically live anywhere. I'm a nomad at heart. Nothing is more boring than monotony.
I'm not going to pursue it the way that actors pursue it which means going to all of the auditions and getting a job and all that stuff, because I don't really need to get a job because I have a job as a writer/director. That's how I make my living mostly now. So I don't need to make a living as an actress.
I always feel this pressure of being a strong and independent icon of womanhood, and without making it look my whole life is revolving around some guy. But loving someone, and being loved means so much to me. We always make fun of it and stuff. But isn't everything we do in life a way to be loved a little more?
In your thirties, you're much more comfortable with sex. First of all, sex is something you've done more. You know you can have sex just to have sex; you can have sex with friends; you can have sex with people you love; you can have sex with people you don't like, but the sex is good. And you can joke about sex much more.
Some people have bigger egos than others. You have to take a lot of abuse, and take it in and not respond, because you don't want conflicts on the movie, you don't want to start screaming at people even when they treat you - even when they're not behaving properly, because you want them to do their job, and keep on doing it.
Most of our life is miscommunication, and when you add a language barrier to it, it just becomes total mayhem and confusion... It just adds to it with all of the cultural differences. It could be an American family meeting another American family and you could still have a total clash. With family, it's like visiting another planet.
So often in my life I've been with people and shared beautiful moments like travelling or staying up all night and watching the sunrise, and I knew it was a special moment, but something was always wrong. I wished I'd been with someone else. I knew that what I was feeling - exactly what was so important to me - they didn't understand.
When people go through a fight, they're saying things because they hurt, and they want to hurt the person back. Sadly, that's the nature of a relationship. It's one moment where you aren't very adult, but that's how love and a certain passionate relationship exists. When you love someone, it doesn't mean you become a perfect human being, do you?
Some people are still very romantic! I mean, those funny vampire films are super romantic, and I don't think that's bad. It means there are a lot of people who still believe in love in a weird way. Okay, it's a cheesy way, and I guess if you think about it, you're like, "Wait, you can love them as long as they're dead?" Maybe that's the point. Maybe it's more twisted than I thought. You can love but you can't age.
I'm 43, and I really don't take care of my looks. It's kind of a bad thing for an actress, but at the same time, I can't go there. I like clothes because clothes are fun. I'm still a girl, I mean, a woman, and I still love shoes. But the aging and the face...and how do you stay young and skinny and all that? I feel like if I focus on those problems too much, I'm going to lose myself in them, and it's not very interesting.
It's very hard to sustain love, that's for sure. But the more you have your own life and your own self, and the less you give away who you are, the more men are attracted to you. The more desperate you are for a relationship, the worse it is to find a healthy relationship. Because the minute you become one-and-a-half people instead of two, it's a mess. Nobody's happy. Keeping your identity and having your own life and your own self, that's the only way I can make my life and sustain life.
Being happy is not all about love! Love is not everything. Work, friends, and achieving things... your finite thing in life can't be getting married and having children. Like, creating a life for myself that's my own, and my own road? That was always the most important thing for me. Right now, I have a kid and stuff, and it's fantastic to be a mother, but it's not the final thing. You want to stay an individual. You need to stay an individual for your kid, as an example of what a human being should be! You want to stay true to yourself and not become a half a person. That is so, so important.