I liked the idea of working with Jean Reno and Mathieu Kassovitz; there was something logical for me. I thought it was a good thing to do. Actually, The Crimson Rivers movie was a big success, and it was one of the biggest successes I ever had in France.

The idea of telling a story in reverse destabilises your ordinary moral reactions. That's one of the points of art - to challenge your preconceptions.

Good guys need to be a little dirty otherwise they're just boring.

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.

Yes. The way people behave, the paradoxes, the contradictions. All these things we have to live with and still pretend that everything is only black or white. That, I think, is the most interesting thing in human nature. The fact that we have to do one thing and pretend something else. That’s when it becomes very interesting. If you can literally speak the way you feel, then it’s not interesting anymore. It’s when you have to lie that it becomes interesting.

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.

I love French style from the Thirties and Forties. French movie stars like Jean Gabin and Yves Montand had so much natural, effortless style.