Isabelle Huppert Quotes

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.

The big problem in the world is when people are forced to be in a totally foreign context.

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.

Am I an intellectual? I don't think so. Less than people sometimes think, I have to say. But more than some others think.

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

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

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

Well, my mother, she made me apply for a school where I was supposed to learn how to type. She said, well, instead of going to demonstrate she should at least [learn], because, everything was on strike. So we had to learn something in the meantime.

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.

To be "here and now," in principle, is just for once. And then you have to repeat that.

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.

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

To me acting and doing movies is really strongly about the present time. It's all about when you do it. It's to create this feeling of extreme awareness and concentration. Because it doesn't happen without an extreme concentration, when you are completely immersed and focused on that.

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

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.

I don't have time, because I still have so many films to see.

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

I was the youngest of five, and I think my mother always knew I was meant to be an actress.

Of course you have to create the conditions of a certain belief. And maybe ignoring something that you don't want to see, at least for the time of the shooting.

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

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.

Sometimes, an actress maybe knows how to think.

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

You don't want to cry over yourself, you don't want to have compassion about yourself. It's not the right place.

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 was raised and I was going to school in the suburbs of Paris. And so we, I didn't really go to the riots, to the barricade. I was too young, actually. Rather young.

We all pretend to be very strong, and then in a fraction, you can just break down, at least for me.

Balzac, you know, our great Balzac, he wrote interesting things about how in literature you keep distance in order to express great feelings. You have to keep a distance - and it's exactly the same with acting.

A script is a very rough material in a way. Whatever questions you might have regarding the script, you might find the beginning of the answers in the book.

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

Sometimes you don't really understand the characters you do. I don't need to. Most of the behavior is obscure and I don't mind that. On the contrary, it's a fuel for me, to find out who the character is. As the spectator is finding out, I find out about the character myself.

I never had any barriers coming from my family. Just encouragement.

When I hear myself, I don't know how I sound.

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.

I've done many, many French movies and many, many English movies. I think it frees something when you don't talk in your mother language, but I also think you withdraw something as well. I'm a French actress, and sometimes I speak in English-speaking roles. For me, being an actress was always being a traveler. It goes together.

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

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.

I know some real intellectual people who might laugh, very close friends who might laugh when I'm said to be an intellectual.

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.

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!

I always thought that's the exact metaphor, the perfect metaphor for acting. To go blind, to ignore the danger, and to totally trust.

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.

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

Like all school students, I think I did a play in my school. The common things, I would say. Nothing really exceptional.

But theatre is always a difficult experience.

I don't think I'm that intellectual.

To be a great director, what does it mean exactly? It's not only about a great director, but also about being able to rely on the very special chemistry that goes between them. It not only has to be a great director, but the great director has to make his relationship to you, the actor, very special.