I loved Chiara Mastroianni voice, her talent, her generosity. We rehearsed for two months...She's a workaholic and perfectionist, like Vincent [Paronnaud] and myself.

I'm not a very good financing person. I don't even know how much money I have in my bank account. I never have opened one single envelope from the bank - they freak me out.

Racism is not nearly as important as poverty. That's the same around the world. What look like ethnic problems are really economic issues. If you look closely at all these conflicts around the world, they come down to poverty and economics and resources. The more poverty, the worse the war.

I took three years of karate because of Bruce Lee, you know. I was a green belt.

The things that I do today are the things I did as a child. When I was a child, either I was drawing or I was taking all the kids off my street and I wanted to make shows - I was all the time making! The only thing is, now I know how to do it better, and now they give me money for it.

This clash of the culture, East and the West, us and them, Muslim and Christian, does not exist.

I'm very open and never write what I'm going to say. Speeches bore everybody else. I have to freestyle. Every time, from one program to another, everything changes and I improvise.