Be humble and say okay, all right, I have to prep myself. So everybody prepped, and we finished the film [Valerian ] four days before the end.

I wanted to prove that I could do something, so I made a short film. That was in fact my main concern, to be able to show that I could do one.

I was kind of surprised that, about 99 percent of the people grabbed the thing [in Valerian].You know it's their thing. And I'm very impressed by that.

When Cara [Delevingne] and Dane [DeHaan] arrived, I told their agent, "They need to know all this." I gave them the 600 pages. I said, "You have to learn everything. You're a cop. You need to know the names." I don't want him, when he meets an alien to go, "Whoa" like this. I want him to know if this guy is peaceful.

I said if I made 10 films in my life, I would be very lucky. That's how I meant it. My fear after my first one was whether they would let me make another one, so I had this goal in my head.

Loving a film is like falling in love with a woman or with a man like you never expect it. It it's not the one you think you will be in love with, you know. You think always that he will be with a beard, and black, and big and finally he's Chinese and you know it's the same thing. There's something very organic about the film and if you forgot it, if you don't have this seed in it...this organic flavor in it the film doesn't work it's wrong.

If you're someone from the government and you meet people from other countries, you want to know who you're dealing with. It's the same for them [in Valerian].