People pretend to be nice; people pretend to be smooth and polite and everything, but this is only an appearance because the way we're built as human beings is only in paradox and contradictions.
Vincent Cassel
There's only so much you can control in life.
You can't escape from what you are.
I don't think France is a racist country, I really don't, but we do still have many problems with our immigrant past, and there's a shame that goes with that, that works both ways, in the host and in the post-immigrant generation.
There is this idea that it's very different from the French point of view to work in America blah, blah, blah. But I think it's different from one person to the other, not from one country to the other.
What I think I'm perceived as in France is, like, I'm this leading man always doing strange movies because most of the movies I did, like 'Irreversible' or 'Brotherhood of the Wolf' and a bunch of others, and even in France, they always come out as a particular movie, not like the typical French kind of movies that people know most of the time.
I think people have a misinterpretation of Method acting, because Method acting is a wonderful thing. The thing is, if you take it too seriously, it's like religion. You start to think it's the truth. But it's not the truth. It's just a way to get somewhere.
As an actor, I think you should always disappear a little. I act in order to lose myself.
I don't really shop any more. I only do it when I have to. I think it is very overrated.
I'm more attracted to the bad guys. Why? Because in real life, I don't know any good guys. I know okay guys. I know polite guys. I know people who can control themselves.
People look up to Jacques Mesrine as if he were a Robin Hood, stealing from the rich, but he never gave anything back to anybody.
I ran away from three different boarding schools before joining a circus school, and eventually I became an actor. The only thing I learned at boarding school was never to send my child to one.
I worked with young directors all my life, only young directors.
People ask me where I live most of the time, and it's kind of complicated for me to answer, because I'm not really sure. It's somewhere in between London, Rome, Paris, and Rio.
French people are never happy with what they have. They're always complaining. They're happy when they're complaining.
My problem is I can't show any of my movies to my daughters. It's tough. 'Beauty and the Beast'... they liked it. But that's the only one, really. Otherwise, they've always been dark or violent.
As a younger actor, I had delusions. I would dream of Scorsese and De Niro; I would meet people, and it would be like this, and it would change moviemaking in France, and Paris would become the center of the world.
I'm moving to Rio permanently with my family. It's one of the places left in the world where people still live with a big charge of poetry on a daily basis. I feel we've kind of lost that here in Europe.
My character in 'La Haine,' he's not bad; he's unhappy, and usually, people are like that. Most of us are angry.
From my point of view, I'm a totally normal person! Really! I have a family. I have kids. I have a house... I don't have a dog.
I have a tendency to think that when you portray baddies in movies, they come out more human than good guys.
I think American audiences like gangster movies. You know, it's part of the culture.
I have a physical background. It's not like I'm a kung fu master, but my real training was dance school, and through that, I move to this thing called Capruera that I used in 'Ocean's 12.' I can pretend that I can do a lot of things, but then, I don't really master anything.
If most women are looking for security, I think men look for adventure.
'Brotherhood of the Wolf' is a very important movie because it represents something new. The director Christophe Gans came up with the idea of taking a French legend and making it some kind of really strange, almost Chinese action movie. The result is something that I haven't seen anywhere before.
I'm really proud of 'Oceans 12.' Of course, you do an 'Oceans' movie, you get known all over the world. It's an incredibly powerful medium: It's a Hollywood-identified blockbuster.
The relationship I have to everyday life is very European. We have a different relationship with religion, with faith, with nudity, with sex, with food.
The few times in my life where I had four or five movies in a row, it was a nightmare. I felt trapped. I felt like my life was planned for a year and a half or two years, and it was terrible. Most of the time, everything collapsed.
I work everywhere. If there is a nice adventure in South Korea, for example, why not? Russia, Brazil, whatever. I'm ready for almost anything.
I feel to look for perfection is a very dangerous path. More than that, it's dangerous because it doesn't exist. You can aim for it, but you already know you won't get there because it doesn't exist. Plus, I definitely think the flaws, little cracks, and accidents are a lot more interesting.
I love French style from the Thirties and Forties. French movie stars like Jean Gabin and Yves Montand had so much natural, effortless style.
My father danced a lot. He was called 'the French Fred Astaire.'
What came out of 'Ocean's Twelve' is actually great because you do one 'Ocean's Twelve,' and you're more known around the world than if you did 20 years in the French cinema industry.
The first important movie that I did, I shaved my head for the movie. When the hair grew back, I had white hair for the first time in my life.
The day after I had my licence to drive, I made Paris/Nice at 230 km/hour.
Female influence came from my grandmother and my aunt. They would sing Corsican love songs while cleaning the house and dress all in black and say melodramatic things like: 'I want to die.'
I feel like the so-called bad guys are never totally bad. I guess it's the closest thing I can do to reality: people act nice but nobody really is nice. We all have to balance that with something dark.
Soderbergh is a very respectable director that manages to have an incredible amount of freedom in a system that doesn't allow anybody to be free as he is on a set. And he will jump from 'Solaris' to 'Ocean's Twelve' and 'Thirteen.'
I love to act. And between action and cuts, when you work for somebody great, it's wonderful, and I still love it. The moment where you create, that instant is still magic to me. But, all the rest, I get bored with it - all the waiting, and the fact that you have to make appearances, that you have to share your life.
I'm a little angry in life.
I think I'm actually more vulnerable than people imagine.
My father is best known for his light comedies, and I'm best known for crazy bad guys with short tempers.
The minute your parents die, you stop fighting them. I realized the more I changed my face for films, the more I looked like him. I always liked to disguise myself because I was trying to run away from his image. But all that is not worth it.
I used to be more self-conscious about style because when you're younger, you want to exist, you want to show everything you do.
The minute I started being recognised, I became much more discreet.
I always had the sense of being in the spotlight, being on stage, being looked at.
When eventually I started to act a bit more, I realised that circus school had taught me something that a lot of actors my age didn't have: physicality. They didn't know how to move. Acting is not all about talking. There is something animalistic about it.
To work with somebody you love makes filming faster, more fun.
I didn't have many girlfriends in my youth. I was an active young man, jumping from one girl to the next, but never with anyone for more than three or four months.
I have learned that acting is not about beauty.
