I have a strong and strange character, and I've rarely met directors who knew what to do with this character. One of the few who did was my father, and in the theatre, Arthur Nauzyciel.

Singing is the rawest thing. Having been naked in films or naked in photo shoots, it's nothing compared to singing. It's absolute nakedness. You are stripped bare!

What I realized is that the desire for making 'Places' came from the fact that I've got this strange situation with having been born in the glitter, born on the other side of the mirror that everyone fantasizes about.

Music, for the moment, has been this hidden thing for me. For the first time, I am master of something. I am not used by someone else, like in movies or pictures, where you always have the happiness or disappointment of knowing it's you seen through someone else's point of view. You go to see a film and half of the pretty scenes are not in it-the ones you liked. Living with this frustration all the time, suddenly music came as the best thing for me at home, where no one can tell you anything.

I was shocked when I looked at art schools in France. There's only one left that does anatomy. Now they do video. They do editing. I would go to film school if I wanted to do video and editing. In art school, it's only new mediums. It's three-dimensional or computer. I found that shocking. No nudes.

It's true that the biggest value of life is that it's going to stop. I was thinking when I was in New York the last time that all that we see that has importance is man-made. It isn't nature-made. And when I was looking through the window, looking at New York, I was so moved by humanity's desire for immortality-because that's what it is.

There is a thing where I get scared watching other people, and really realize, My God, their happy lives are going to stop. Sometimes you feel that people have 19 jokers in their back pocket and, because of the way they're living, you're like, Do you know that this is not going to happen over and over again forever?