Juliette Binoche Quotes

"Movies are open doors, and at every door, I change character and life...I live for the present always. I accept this risk. I don`t deny the past, but it`s a page to turn."

"When I returned to France after winning the Oscar, I was treated like royalty, or like a football hero!"

"Giving birth is like a vase of beautiful flowers. Only you`re just the vase, and only for a very short moment. The flowers are beautiful, but they belong to themselves, not to the vase."

"I am not a great French woman. George Sand, Marguerite Duras and Simone de Beauvoir are great French women".

"I knew I had become a star when I shook hands with Simone Signoret at the 1985 Cannes Film Festival. She died four months later".

"Acting is like peeling an onion. You have to peel away each layer to reveal another."

"I want to make films that are political and social. Films with a message or an idea. Films that dare to ask."

"If a star is someone who gives light, then I can be a star. But if a star is someone who goes after money and magazine covers then it`s sick and I don`t want it!"

"French women bloom at 40! I can`t wait!"

"My earliest memory is loneliness. That`s a hard thing to live with"

"My real excitement comes when a movie transforms me. When you love the movie you`ve played in, you can make that bridge back to your own life."

I have been proposed to four times. Twice at the beginning of a relationship and twice at the end of a relationship. I`ve never said no. I just didn`t give an answer!

I`ve never thought of my characters as being sad. On the contrary, they are full of life. They didn`t choose tragedy. Tragedy chose them.

I never felt being an actor or making a movie was an easy thing to do.

I think I am pretty much melancholic.

I believe that being an actress or being involved in a movie has to be a life experience, otherwise why go for it? I have to change me, and I have to learn things, and I have to push me and my limits. By acting, I find a freedom inside of a prison in a way.

But, you know, when I choose a film I need to believe in it and believe I can do something special with it, and after a while that means not trying to judge or analyze why I should do it. You have to follow this intuition thing, which is a mystery to me.

My ambition is to have beautiful encounters, not to make money.

Acting is a tough business, and you need to be in good shape mentally and physically.

If you have everything, then you don`t want to go on. It`s the lacking that makes you search for something better.

I was so happy when they cast me in Chocolat, because it`s one of my vices.

Each new film is like a trial. Before I step in front of the camera, I do not know whether I am going to fall or whether I am going to fly - and that is exactly the way I want it to stay.

Before I thought there was a common denominator between my films - as if all my characters were sisters - but I`m not so sure now.

Choosing to be in the theatre was a way to put my roots down somewhere with other people. It was a way to choose a new family.

I like travelling and if I have to come to Hollywood to make a movie I will, but otherwise I`d never move there. It`s very much an industry town and that doesn`t really interest me.

I think acting is about forgetting yourself in order to give the best of yourself. It`s passing through you more than you`re creating it. You`re not the flower, but the vase which holds the flower.

I think it`s the same simple thing for everyone - to be happy, and have love in your life.

I won`t do something just for the sake of working.

I would have loved to have met Marilyn Monroe and have dinner with her.

It`s never been my purpose to become an American icon, or more famous or richer.

I try to see my films just once. it`s like a dream you`ve been through when it`s been intense, and you just have to go through it once more just to make sure you`ve had it.

People think actors have such glamorous lives, but the truth is actors go where nobody wants to go.

Oh, I`ll be forgotten too, don`t worry.

Movies are open doors, and at every door, I change character and life.

I sometimes feel like I could do another job. Anything. Maybe because as an actress you`re playing different characters, everything feels possible.

You must understand, I don`t have to be happy to be happy.

I don`t believe in coincidence.

I live for the present always. I accept this risk. I don`t deny the past, but it`s a page to turn.

I learned a lot last year about the current difficulties in independent film making. Money is promised one minute and gone the next. I was bitterly disappointed about Scheherazade. It was one of the best scripts I have ever read.

Going to South Africa (Country of My Skull (2004)) has changed me utterly. I have seen and heard about acts of cruelty and hatred which are hard to comprehend. But I`ve also seen peace and tranquility like nowhere else on earth.

What makes a person sexy is when he`s not trying to be sexy.

As an actress we don`t beat one another. It`s whoever`s right for the part.

I`m not obsessed by looks. I think you can become a prisoner of your own image.

But I`ve never felt that being an actress is being in a comfortable place. It`s seen from the outside that we`re being driven in big cars and having these gorgeous suites and all of that. But come on, it`s not about that.

Being a famous actress may give you a sense of being important, but believe me, it`s just an illusion.

Maybe it`s because my mother divorced and my grandmother divorced, so maybe I`m frightened deep down. But then I also feel there is no real need. Why do I need to get married? To reassure me? No I don`t need reassurance.

But I think it`s a little different in Europe, because 40 is really the best age for a woman. That`s when we hit our peak and become this ripe fruit.

I would say I`m humanly engaged.

Attraction is beyond our will or ideas sometimes.

What I love most about this crazy life is the adventure of it.

There was probably something as a child I wanted to express, something unsaid that I needed to share.

For me, habit is just a synonym for death.

My only ambition is to be true every moment I am living.

I start with almost an emptiness. The experience of jumping into an intimate place is where it`s exciting. So it doesn`t matter which way you`re doing it, what matters is expressing yourself. That`s the core to me. That`s why if someone told me `you will never act again,` I would be OK with that, because there are other ways of expressing yourself."

"It was like a huge family. We would do very few takes - most of the time just one, and we would laugh a lot. ... I miss him a lot, of course. He was an adorable, intelligent man."

(Speaking about director Krzysztof Kieslowski)

"I was very impressed by him, and I was full of desire. And because of my needs, I was shocked by his short way of responding sometimes on the set, because he was trying to create something special, he was in his world, and I was expecting he would be like a teacher in class - teaching the actor. I didn`t know the teacher wouldn`t give a s- about me! (laughs). ... When I think about it years after, I think it was a great lesson. I do remember him being generous, money-wise, and when you`re a young actress, you remember the people treating you well, and that meant a great deal at the time, because I had very little money."

(on working with Godard)

"Exposure is a choice, a commitment to others. The red carpet, the photographers - they are not always easy to live with, but I have to deal with it."