Love for your work, love for another person, love for yourself - love is a huge pond, and it's never empty. You can go and take from it, and it will give you strength.
Vicky Krieps
Every good love story is actually completely insane, completely mad.
I didn't know what acting school was, so I went onto the computer and typed 'acting school.' I found one in Berlin, and I found ones in Vienna, Zurich, and London. I went to all of those places to audition. You were supposed to have two monologues, and I only had one.
I thought maybe I should write or study law. I even had the idea to open a flower shop. But I was so fascinated with film, I couldn't stay away.
I was definitely in acting class in school, but I was never the princess of the play. I will always remember: they always gave me the part of the gypsy or the old man in the corner.
In order to make Alma innocent and open, I had to forget that I'm stressed as an actress because I'm making a film with Paul Thomas Anderson. I had to let go of everything and hold onto the text. The language was like a rope I could cling onto and make my way blindfolded through the shooting.
I didn't have the courage to let myself think or dream of acting because I come from Luxembourg - it's a very small country, and I think it's a place you need to get away from to see how big the world is and what's possible.
For me, couture is like 35 mm. film. It's so important we school ourselves to see real quality. In a couture garment, as in a 35 mm. film, you really feel the life of the people who made it. In high-street fashion, it's different. There's no risk.
In German, if a situation is tense, you say 'unter strom' - under electricity.
I never had a plan; I always follow my intuition.
It seemed too glamorous to me to be an actress like in the movies.
I meet a person as the person. I try to not give away who they are or who they're supposed to be.
Sexuality isn't something you create. It is between people, and then it just happens.
I am always open to when someone says, 'Let's do it this way.'
I stood in front of a mountain and was overwhelmed by the beauty and energy; I had goosebumps. I thought, if I could record this feeling, go back home and pour it out again so other people can have that feeling, this I would want to be my work. I knew it was acting - I wanted to be like a messenger or medium.
I do feel that I myself wouldn't have had, in my life looking back, the courage to go out and say, 'I'm a good actress.' So I think I'm one of those people that needed to be seen by someone else to see myself.
It was like putting your foot into a pond and knowing that I wanted to dive into this. It wasn't even just acting. It was this medium, film. I had to explore it.
I've been a waitress for events, but a lady at the Victoria hotel in Yorkshire showed me how to do it properly.
Many relationships can become difficult, and it can be hard to find a way back.
When I was 26, I got pregnant. I decided to have the baby because I accept everything in life as an adventure. I accept life. I couldn't see why you would not accept it.
When I got pregnant, I knew I wasn't anywhere in my career, that I had not arrived. I was still on my adventure, and so I said to the child in my belly, 'I am so happy for you to come, but you should know I'm still on my way, and you'll have to come with me and be in my rucksack.'
I have such strong beliefs. No money or anything could change that.
I don't really enjoy being the center of attention; I find it hard.
I don't call myself a method actor, but the thing is, when you meet Reynolds Woodcock, who is always Reynolds Woodcock, you kind of are Alma, and you kind of become Alma all the time. I think after the first day, Vicky was going, 'Oh gosh.' It was so intense, and I couldn't understand why it was so intense.
I often have the feeling that acting is really not difficult, because all I do is I just listen. I just listen. I just listen to what there is. And if there's nothing, then I listen to nothing. If there's a chair, and it's empty, I listen to an empty chair, and I will respond to it.
I wasn't a girl who grew up wearing dresses, but I was always attracted to fabric. When we'd go to a shop, the fabric I'd pick was always the most expensive. It was always the silk or cashmere. It was something in me, that desire to choose quality. It's the same now.
I found meditation. It was more out of pure desperation: I just started to wake up at 5 and sit for one hour, and suddenly, day after day, piece by piece, I could really feel I was coming back into me.
I'm always interested in projects. Whatever I do, I'm interested in the color of the material. I'm not interested in who's making it. I'm more concentrated on the work.
I think women are strong, and they have never been weak.
The way I grew up, I had hippie parents, and we would run around the garden with no shoes on, very close to nature. So I never wore little princess dresses. I still have this feeling whenever I wear a very formal dress; I always have this slight fear that people will point their fingers at me and laugh: 'Vicky is trying to look like a lady.'
The more I'm here in L.A. talking to people, the more I believe that what I've been doing is right, and that's the belief that you have to judge a role from the character, by the script.
Whenever money is in the game, it can suffocate anything and anyone else, and I think people have been misled by money, or the dream of money, or selling the dream that if you've made it money-wise, you've made a life. Which is a lie. You don't get happiness by money.
Whenever you make someone dependent on your money... It's this capitalist idea that I think has made America into a place where it's hard to breathe as an individual sometimes.
For me, the costume is very important. More the feel of it than the look of it. I take it more from the inside. So if I wear something that's heavy, it will affect my character. Is it very tight, and do I feel almost imprisoned, or is it very comfortable? It's the feeling of the costume that tells me where to go with the character.
I made a movie in Germany called 'The Chambermaid' - it was very, very small. I think it cost €70,000 to make. I even put some money in and raised some money for it. It was real German arthouse... It goes, somehow, out there on the Internet, and it goes on iTunes.
When I act, I act with my skin.
Actors actually have a feeling, like a sixth sense. They are like mediums. But it only works - you can only become this medium or this vessel to transport emotions and images and feelings - if you are not too full of yourself. Otherwise, there wouldn't be space for a story to live inside of you or a world to evolve in you and around you.
In my family, people become pregnant at 33 or something, not 26.
Love cannot be defined, caught, cast in stone, or archived. It's something we have no control over. Love is completely analog. Love can never be digital.
I grew up wearing trousers and climbing trees.
You can give into a relationship and warmth and the arms of another person.
You want to be a good mother, and you want to be a good actress, and you want to be a good friend, and we expect this of us, to be all of this.
I'm very proudly European. I love that we have stories to tell of a place where we come from and we can relate to.
I love how complicated we are. We are complicated because of what we've had and lived.
I don't believe in borders, I find them boring. And I don't see any difference between any person.
