Cinema is entertainment, and people go to the movies because they want to feel good and forget about everything.

I wanted to be an actor to act, and now, being an actor, you have to dress up, you have to be nice, you have to be smart, you have to be sexy, you have to be ready.

Coming from Paris, I'd really like to live in Rio. I think it's gotten better. It's not as violent. The economy is better. The middle class is rising.

I didn't want to be part of that tradition of French cinema that wasn't really watched by the people of my age. I didn't really care to be in the last André Téchiné or Claude Chabrol movie, even though some of them are really interesting. For me, it was much more important to work with Mathieu Kassovitz or Gaspar Noé. It was for me a question of identity.

La Haine - first of all, it was the story of friendship. I was very close with Mathieu Kassovitz; he was somebody I met in the nights of Paris. And the hip-hop scene and all that... You know, it was very much about doing our own thing, and some of the subject matter was so close to what we knew and the people we were hanging out with.

You usually never know what you're going to do when you're making a movie.

It was like a dream to me to suddenly get into the market with that kind of movie, like La Haine. It actually created my identity as an actor, that thing.