Charlotte Gainsbourg Quotes

I don't like being on my own. I'm happy meeting people and collaborating.

I love being a beginner. It can be a terrible feeling because you're ashamed of everything you do, but it's so exciting at the same time.

My father loved me and he wanted to work with me and he didn't care what people would say.

I'm desperate to work again. I've often had those periods, but two years was the longest.

I didn't go to acting school, so it was great to be able to rehearse for a month or two, to workshop, and be with a director who even gave me acting exercises.

I was so lucky because I started working very young. And my father was very wealthy and I didn't need to work. I did my films.

Girls can wear jeans, cut their hair short, wear shirts and boots, 'cause it's okay to be a boy, but for a boy to look like a girl is degrading.

I haven't found a comfortable place onstage. I'm sure it doesn't have to be comfortable, but I'm very nervous, so I don't enjoy myself.

I think, being an actress, you know that you're getting old. I'm 44. I mean, an agent said when I turned 40, "It won't get better."

It's nice that we have all these different films.

Before I started touring, I worked with someone to help me, even physically, because I was so shy. And you can't be shy going onstage. So I had to push myself in a direction that wasn't myself.

I wish I could just accept that I'm not that good and not be shy about the fact that I'm not that professional.

There's always this thing of wanting to be elsewhere.

Maybe, in the back of my head, I'm thinking I have to do as much as I can. It'll stop.

I still find it hard to push my own limits. I know where my limits are and that I always have to push myself.

When you fight against your own weaknesses, there's something embarrassing about it.

You don't accept your weaknesses the same way that you love the weaknesses of another artist, because when they make mistakes they don't look like weaknesses.

Wanting to do it was much more powerful than the fright.

It was very liberating to be able to sing in English. It had a different resonance, different images. It was like being a stranger in a foreign land, which was helpful.

I thought people wouldn't take me seriously if too much acting was involved in the singing. But now I love the idea of mixing everything together.

I don't have tons of scripts where I don't know what to choose and I'm trying to calculate. It's either I read something and I have an impulse to do it, or in meeting someone, I want to work with them, but it's always been very obvious.

I think I developed a very closed personality. I didn't really have friends. I changed schools every year.

I couldn't do anything else, I enjoy it so much. But I find it tough.

I started so old, so the touring world will always be a foreign land for me. I'll never be someone who's "been on the road."

Everyone gets the feeling that they know you and they know your life, and I felt really embarrassed by that.

I like to play roles different from myself so I can hide behind them.

I hated seeing myself on screen. I was full of complexes. I hated my face for a very, very long time.

I don't feel I have to share everything.

In France, you're with the crew, and you have lunch with them. It's more like a family.

I don't feel that I've accomplished anything. I feel that it'll be better when I won't care as much, but it's so difficult to let go and accept all the wrong notes.

You don't even need the director's judgement. It's too much.

I'm a very shy person towards my intimacy and private life.

I was very attached to my family when my father died. I was 19. I was about to go live with my father right when he died, so it was very intense.

I hope one day I will be able to be completely myself. Maybe I'll be wilder.

I was very well paid for my age, and I could make choices, decide not to do a film for six months and wait until I'd get the right thing. Which made me quite a coward.

You think that being a girl is degrading, but secretly, you'd love to know what it's like, wouldn't you?