Truffaut Quotes

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.

I could never have conceived that I would ever get to work in a Truffaut film. It was astonishing to me, and still is. I felt like an old pro, but it was still so unexpected.

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.

(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.

Truffaut loved actresses, and he was very intense. All the actresses I knew wanted to do a film with him.

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.