I took the test for AIDS. I began to hate people who were not sick. Those people are monsters, I would think, believing that they are well because of moral superiority, because they are good. I identified with the loneliness of the sick. I felt that there was something pure about them.
Isabelle Adjani
Nothingness not being nothing, nothingness being emptiness.
Passion is all but soft, it's not tender, it's violence to which you get hooked by pleasure.
Passion is very destructive.
You must take the risk to disclose yourself in order to become more real, more human. And even if the price is high.
There are people who never experience that, who remain closed until death, from fear of change.
I like films that rest in the memory, so I try and choose parts which have some kind of social or emotional force.
When you hold a baby in your arms, you don't want to put it in a basket right away. You want to keep the baby close.
I have no fear of being less beautiful, I've always been afraid of not being beautiful.
It doesn't need to be that violent and crazy and wild. Having experienced it, you don't belong to yourself anymore. You belong to the passion... It's something you have to go through to learn what passion is about.
Life has brought me work to do on myself these past two years.
You protect your being when you love yourself better. That's the secret.
I've learned that to expose yourself, to reveal yourself is a test of your humanness.
For me, being an actress is not just a profession but a profession of faith.
If my life hadn't itself been a modern adaptation of 'Les Atrides,' I probably would never have left the theatre.
Today I trust my instinct, I trust myself. Finally.
One can not love without opening oneself, and opening oneself, that's taking the risk of suffering. One does not have control.
One can be emptied out and be filled up.
One believes that if nothing happens, one disappears. That is not true.
I've never felt like a French actress.
Journalists are still inventing things that never existed about me. Before, it made me cry, but now I laugh about it.
I'm a very secretive person. That's how I grew up. My father was very secretive.
There has already been the karmic work: that what life has transformed in me, this initiation brought on, of necessity, by trials.
I believe in angels, so it's simple.
I think that we all carry the divine within us.
To change, that is the most difficult thing to accomplish.
If I had not passed through trial - through passion, one could say - through these years so painful and so rich, I don't believe I could take on my life and my career as I do today.
Before, for me, peace could have been synonymous with boredom.
One is never ready for success. It consecrates and looses you at the same time.
To leave in search of yourself, of your real needs, is easier when you don't have to justify yourself to anyone, when there are not too many people bestowing you their attention.
I do not want to work to correspond to an image.
In love, one should simplify, choose persons worthy of their promises and leave them if they don't keep them.
But no one frees himself from being in love in three days.
I believe that when you work on yourself, you are attracted by different, more positive beings.
Passion surprises. One doesn't search it. It can happen to you tomorrow.
My limits will be better marked. Both the limits I will set, and my own limits.
I don't think of it at the moment, but the roles that interest me are those of young people.
There has also been much love, joy, evidence of admiration, there has never been one without the other.
I'm in an agreeable state: busy, enthusiastic, curious.
I've suffered too much to hide my feelings.
The newspapers were saying, 'You have AIDS.' They actually said I was dead. I just threw myself into my work when the whispering campaign turned really ugly.
I talked about the persecution of Algerians and told about racism in my childhood. And it was as if, after that, I wasn't French anymore.
I went on French television for 20 minutes. It was very embarrassing to have to say, 'I'm not dead. I'm well. I'm not ill, and I don't have AIDS.' I hated doing it, because it was so insulting to those who really did have AIDS.
I think we have to get back the value of behavior that is consistent with being taught: that's to say, respecting teachers, listening, and not always expecting your opinion to take precedence.
I am a follower of hyaluronic acid - always in small doses, of course - to fill wrinkles and fine lines.
If I don't work very often, it's because what I read is written for formidable actresses, but actresses who make a habit of playing with their cup half full.
I take risks, but I don't lose respect for my real self. Because what's going to happen afterwards? How are you going to get back? Is there going to be a train, or will it be after midnight and you can't go home again?
It's funny how people fantasise about your life sometimes. But it's so much quieter than they think.
People tell me I'm doing all these intense women and that I should lighten up. Then I do a comedy that I'm not happy with, and I think, 'Let's go back to heavy, heart-breaking drama; it's so much more fun.'
The soul preserves beauty.
