What a director is looking for is someone who will follow you and no matter what. And if you ask for blue, he's gonna try blue. And if you say, give me a piece of red with it, and they try. And you don't mind so much if it's difficult to get the blue and the red together. As long as they try. And as long as they give everything they can to give you what you want. That's what I'm looking for.

That's the storyboard that we have in the beginning [of Valerian]. It's an easy shot. It's just a spaceship coming in. That's the first layout. On the first layout, we see the timing of the shot and the speed. It starts to get some shadows, and we see that everything is moving in the back.

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.

You know sometimes you're in a position of risk and you feel that you can turn good or bad.

I don't want to show kids that I am smoking.

You know, money will never save anyone. Compassion can save someone, love can save someone, money will never save anyone. And as long as the entire society will put money first... Money should be like third or fourth or fifth, I'm not saying lets get rid of money, but how can we put money as number one? As the only value, like if you are rich, you're famous you go VIP, why? It's just insane, the way we've transformed the society.

I wanted to do something that was entertaining - but with a catch.