I come from an acting family, my father was an actor, and I had to fight my way and just create my own identity.

People look up to Jacques Mesrine as if he were a Robin Hood, stealing from the rich, but he never gave anything back to anybody.

I was thinking of going to London drama schools or to New York, because France didn't accommodate the things I wanted to do in film.

Steven Soderbergh really likes Irréversible, that's about all I can tell you. About the making, well, it was a very particular situation, because those people all know each other, and they're all big stars. I felt like the little French guy, really. And I was very flattered to be called on that, of course, but I felt like if I didn't find something to be a little original, different, particular in the movie, I would just disappear.

When you see violence in movies in general, it's very quick and painless, which isn't what it's like.

If kids really made all the parents better, there wouldn't be crazy kids in the world.

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.