Isabelle Huppert Quotations

In a very complex way, things have improved in the dramatic field. Before you had the good and the bad and you couldn't mingle them. Now it's more ambiguous

For an actress there is no greater gift than having a camera in front of you, listening to the most beautiful music in the world and just being looked at!

Perhaps Europeans are a bit more skeptic whereas Americans are more believers.

I never wondered whether I should be a stage actress or a movie actress

Acting is a way of living out one's insanity.

My mom's a Catholic, and my dad's a Jew, and they didn't want anything to do with anything.

The Greeks already understood that there was more interest in portraying an unusual character than a usual character - that is the purpose of films and theatre

I like to take these unusual characters and then make them as normal as possible, because we all know that the tragedy and the abnormal always hides itself behind the normal

Before I do a play I say that I hope it's going to be for as short a time as possible but, once you do it, it is a paradoxical pleasure. One evening out of two there are five minutes of a miracle and for those five minutes you want to do it again and again. It's like a drug

It really helps you to go through difficult situations by just thinking about it as being a big amount of work which you have to solve how to do. For example, I don't feel very inspired when I act, I just act. That's it

Even for the most difficult scenes, and there are difficult scenes in the film, and because Michael Haneke is such a great film-maker - I think a great film-maker is not only being inspired, but how to do it, how to make it as real as possible, knowing that it's not real

But it wasn't just a technical approach towards the piano, studying the music for this film was also a way of approaching the soul of the film, because the film is really about the soul of Schubert and the soul of Bach

When you come to do the film, it is not the time to wonder why you do it. It's just how to do it

But someone like Claude Chabrol tries to make a connection between the society in which we live and the social reasons which make monsters out of some people

For me, making films is like being on vacation, it's a nice walk. But theatre is like mountaineering. You never know whether you're going to fall off or make it to the top

Once you have made the decision to do the film, once you have identified the desire and all the deep and personal, intimate, artistic reasons why you want to do the film, then it's more a matter of how to do things

Yes, he wanted me to do Funny Games before, which I didn't want to do because the film was very theoretical - the way people experience violence on screen. There was very little space for fiction, it was more like a sacrifice for the actors than anything else.

But on the whole, nothing requires unbearable energy for me, it's just a normal thing

For a long time I have compared cinema to music, I think cinema has a lot to do with the rhythm of music

Going through this musical experience really helped us to understand the core of the film.

I did a film very quickly, and then a lot of work for television, and then I did stage work.

Firstly I did it in this huge theatre in Avignon, then to smaller places, then bigger places. You have to change the volume of the voice, give more or less. The way you have to relate to space makes it like sculpture

I don't know if you ever say to yourself that you want to be an actress. It eventually becomes a social function - you are an actress and you make a living out of it, but at the beginning it's more a matter of how to survive, or how to exist in a certain way

I think being an actress is more how to cope with the fact that you can't do anything else than to express a talent. It's a way of being untalented for anything

She's really quite talented, ... It was like she had been making movies all her life. There was no naivety or clumsiness.

I'm standing all the way through the piece, very stiff like a tree, very much rooted in the earth, ... It's like she was wishing to die standing, to die alive. It's a strange feeling.

I studied, as every little French girl, the piano... I studied for 12 years and then I stopped, because I was very bored with it.

Yes, that is true, ... A mutual friend of ours told me that Alexandra wanted to give me that script, so she didn't come out of nowhere. But it did take me a while before I read it. Then she insisted every morning and after a few months I read it and I thought, 'Oh my God, it's very good.'

Yes, it happens very often that someone comes and gives you something, ... But not so many good ones, which makes it easier.

Venice brings me luck. There is no great role without a great director, so from the bottom of my heart I thank Patrice.

The story is very cruel and very sharp,

With theatre, I like to compare it to sculpture. It is a shape that you shape. I have this funny image in my head. You can extend it, reduce it.

I'm very happy. But when this sort of thing happens, it's best to have a certain detachment.

I think movies say a lot [about real life], even more than theater. It says a lot about the invisible, that movies are so fascinating. The camera lens is like a microscope that goes beyond the surface. It's like you're exploring a secret, so you explore the director's secret, you explore the actor's secret, and therefore you explore the universe's secrets.

I don't get many good offers. I like to follow the same kind of path I follow in France. If I don't feel the movie is very original or has a good amount of potential, I don't do it. In the films I've done I can feel I'm part of a specific universe, but those sorts of opportunities are quite rare.

A film is the reflection of the soul of its creator,

There are many different ways of being funny. I'm not sure that there's so many different ways of being dramatic.

The choosing of a role is so difficult for me. That's the real challenge: to choose the role, not to do the role. Once you've chosen them, the process is much easier.

Some roles are easier to choose, some roles are more difficult because they are more daring. Sometimes you have to dare.

But theatre is always a difficult experience

If I seem detached or distant, it's because I think this is a more exact reproduction of life, where you hide as much as you show. When I see a scene in which feelings get loudly exteriorized, I say to myself, 'Well, at least this never happens to me.' I very rarely go through this type of expression. Most of the time things are hidden or at least much more subdued.

I think that a sense of humor of an actor comes through most of the time. Maybe some actors have less than others, and I have it, I think. It's my nature.

If on paper one would say, "You're gonna spend three weeks in Death Valley," you say, "No, I'm not going to be able to." Very often, very quickly you forget about it.

It was sometimes 60 degrees [Celsius], but it's very strange, cinema makes you forget reality most of the time. You are more concerned about your inner feelings, or your work.

One would expect an actress to stand onscreen mostly as a caricature. If she would say, "I'm selling shoes," you would believe her. She says it and it creates this fiction, non-fiction perception of the film. People believe it because she says it. If she said, "I'm a butcher," people would believe it too, I think.

You could call it a collection of self-portraits. Each photographer has really photographed himself.

It's more like breathing for me to act,

It's not difficult; it's not a big effort. But it's a big effort for me to pursue what I want to do, so that's the effort. When I act, it's just a relief. It's just a respiration.