Charlotte Gainsbourg Quotes

I was really nervous about people booing, because my mother had gone for a film 20 years earlier and had a terrible time with people booing, whistling, so I knew that in Cannes people can get aggressive.

I don’t have tons of scripts where I don’t know what to choose and I’m trying to calculate. It’s either I read something and I have an impulse to do it, or in meeting someone, I want to work with them, but it’s always been very obvious.

In France I'm very private, I don't like talking about my life, and I imagined that people would think that I'm now an open book.

I was so lucky because I started working very young. And my father was very wealthy and I didn't need to work. I did my films.

I came to understand that people come and see you because they like you. They don't come to throw things at you.

I still find it hard to push my own limits. I know where my limits are and that I always have to push myself.

Wanting to do it was much more powerful than the fright.

I love being a beginner. It can be a terrible feeling because you're ashamed of everything you do, but it's so exciting at the same time.

The more sincere I could be, the better it would be for the film.

Before I started touring, I worked with someone to help me, even physically, because I was so shy. And you can't be shy going onstage. So I had to push myself in a direction that wasn't myself.

Even moving around onstage seemed very artificial. But at the same time you have to make that effort in order to get back to who you are and even accept not moving, if that's who you are.

I was very well paid for my age, and I could make choices, decide not to do a film for six months and wait until I'd get the right thing. Which made me quite a coward.

Maybe, in the back of my head, I'm thinking I have to do as much as I can. It'll stop.

I didn't go to acting school, so it was great to be able to rehearse for a month or two, to workshop, and be with a director who even gave me acting exercises.

At the beginning it wasn't to do with the work, it was more the experience.

I didn't want to change my personality onstage, but I still had to build some kind of ego to be able to go up there. If not, there's no point.

Girls can wear jeans, cut their hair short, wear shirts and boots, 'cause it's okay to be a boy, but for a boy to look like a girl is degrading.

I'd love to be able to write again, but I'm so repetitive. And it was all about fear. Never positive. Just indulgent about my sadness.

When you fight against your own weaknesses, there's something embarrassing about it.

It's nice that we have all these different films.

I'm desperate to work again. I've often had those periods, but two years was the longest.

The English was really my mother, it was never me. Being the daughter of my father, I always felt very French.

I felt that people would criticize everything. I was so scared about playing Paris. I was very much aware that the greatest concerts my father and mother had done were there. I was sure people would be very tough.

I don't feel I have to share everything.

I like to play roles different from myself so I can hide behind them.

It rarely happens that I get to work again with the same director. I had such a wonderful time on Antichrist with Lars von Trier, that I was going to do whatever he proposed me to do. When he sent me the script of Christmas, I just loved it. I think I love anything he writes.

I don't feel that I've accomplished anything. I feel that it'll be better when I won't care as much, but it's so difficult to let go and accept all the wrong notes.

I went on television and I wouldn't say a word; I feel so stupid when I watch them again.

In France, you're with the crew, and you have lunch with them. It's more like a family.

I'm a very shy person towards my intimacy and private life.

There were always questions about my parents; I got so fed up with that.

It's more than a job. It's very personal, so when you're hurt, you're really hurt inside.

I can't do things by myself. I need a motivation, and the motivation is always the director's. I find my freedom inside other people's barriers. It's easier for me to find myself inside someone else's tracks.

I haven't found a comfortable place onstage. I'm sure it doesn't have to be comfortable, but I'm very nervous, so I don't enjoy myself.

Each time I changed, it was as if, on purpose, I didn’t want anyone to know too much about me, which of course now I regret, because I closed myself to everything. But it was my way of dealing with things.

I used to hate being recognised.

I wish I could just accept that I'm not that good and not be shy about the fact that I'm not that professional.

I would love to be able to do a film. I would love to be able to focus on what excites me in watching actors.

I think it's a legend that Lars von Trier is such a tough person to work with. I really didn't experience any of that. Of course, he's difficult in the sense that what he asks for is difficult. For my part in Antichrist, I suffered a bit. But it was the part - it wasn't him. He wasn't cruel. On the contrary, he was very kind. You know what you're up for when you read the pitch.

I was very attached to my family when my father died. I was 19. I was about to go live with my father right when he died, so it was very intense.

I think, being an actress, you know that you're getting old. I'm 44. I mean, an agent said when I turned 40, "It won't get better."

Letting go of things and not being afraid of being ridiculous or over the top - I think that's the main thing for me to work on.

When you love someone, you don't want them to suffer at all.

My father loved me and he wanted to work with me and he didn't care what people would say.

There's always this thing of wanting to be elsewhere.

I wasn't getting the responses I hoped for. You can't protect yourself from other judgments.

You don't accept your weaknesses the same way that you love the weaknesses of another artist, because when they make mistakes they don't look like weaknesses.

I hope one day I will be able to be completely myself. Maybe I'll be wilder.