Francois Quotes

I think for me, the really wonderful and memorable moments was the way that I was able to learn so much working with François who`s a very, very specific director and because he`s engaged in every single element of the process.

He`s monumentally gifted - that sounds so terrible and pretentious, I know - but he`s made nine brilliant films, all of them so different. So you think to yourself, I might disagree with you on one small thing, but I`m guessing you know what you`re doing. (On Francois Ozon)

For years, directors and producers came up to me and said they`d wanted me for a role, but (Alfred Hitchcock) wouldn`t allow it. The worst was when I found out that François Truffaut had wanted to cast me. I`d never heard a word about it. That one hurt.

(On shooting in London, 2004) In the United States things have changed a lot, and it`s hard to make good small films now. There was a time in the 1950s when I wanted to be a playwright, because until that time movies, which mostly came out of Hollywood, were stupid and not interesting. Then we started to get wonderful European films, and American films started to grow up a little bit, and the industry became more fun to work in than the theatre. I loved it. But now it`s taken a turn in the other direction and studios are back in command and are not that interested in pictures that make only a little bit of money. When I was younger, every week we`d get a Federico Fellini or an Ingmar Bergman or a Jean-Luc Godard or François Truffaut, but now you almost never get any of that. Filmmakers like myself have a hard time. The avaricious studios couldn`t care less about good films - if they get a good film they`re twice as happy, but money-making films are their goal. They only want these $100-million pictures that make $500 million. That`s why I`m happy to work in London, because I`m right back in the same kind of liberal creative attitude that I`m used to.

For years, directors and producers came up to me and said they`d wanted me for a role, but (Alfred Hitchcock) wouldn`t allow it. The worst was when I found out that Francois Truffaut had wanted to cast me. I`d never heard a word about it. That one hurt.

But Maastricht was not the end of history. It was a first step towards a Europe of growth, of employment, a social Europe. That was the vision of Francois Mitterrand. We are far from that now.

From Chirac and Schroeder we have seen a rhetorical commitment for France and Germany to co-operate but when they have combined it has been to block reforms. They have not produced an actual agenda for advancing the union, unlike the days of Helmut Kohl and Francois Mitterand, when France and Germany really were driving Europe.

I knew at the start gate that Francois Bourque was fourth and there is a part of me that said `I don`t want to be fourth, I`m going to give everything I have,` and I came fourth.