I have to say that I've always believed perfectionism is more of a disease than a quality. I do try to go with the flow but I can't let go.

The older you get, the more you realise how happenstance... has helped to determine your path through life.

Certainly in the second film [Maigret's Dead Man], which is quite a more unpleasant and darker story, it's quite different in tone and feel.

I'm more critical of the films I make than anyone else.

The decision to do it [play Maigret] was related to the fact that the character is a very ordinary man, and generally speaking I haven't played very many ordinary men.

Paris in the mid-'50s was a very interesting place. It was only ten years after the Third Reich had left, and the city was awash with guns, and crime, and racketeering, and all sorts of hangovers from a very difficult time in French history. So it's an interesting time to be a policeman.

I want to express myself in a different way. I have a performing inclination.