Charlotte Rampling Quotes

One mysterious person looking at another mysterious person equals what? Another mystery.

I know I have great inner strength; I always have. I can blank things out, cut people out, and I know that I can go and live in a cave on my own if necessary.

The process of filmmaking is very musical, you get into the rhythm and the rhythmics of how someone is, especially with Woody Allen who is very much into body language and body movement.

I'd had a French education for three years, my father being in the army. From 9 to 12, I went to French school. I've been sort of part of the culture, part of the geography, since I was quite young - the imprint was there.

I started writing diaries, and mine were horrible. Oh, the monotony. Oh, the angst. I said, 'I don't want anyone to find these!' I destroyed them.

You cannot watch yourself dispassionately.

I am actually a very unspeaking person. I'm not really good in social situations. People expect me to be more outgoing. I don't know why. They think I have this kind of assurance.

I can be seen as not being very communicative, or rather mysterious, or distant, or rather cold - all those things. Yeah, I know I can give off that impression. So I am that, too.

You can't fool an audience with lots of bits and pieces. You have to lead them somewhere.

A lot of young actors will do a scene and then run off and look at themselves. I don't believe in that at all.

You go though a period of immense pain when reality meets the dream.

I did that film just so I could kiss Robert Redford.

I was very friendly with Jimi Hendrix because my boyfriend at the time, Tommy Weber, was making a film about him, so I would go to all of his shows.

I am fascinated by the whole process of what it's like to be alive, whether it's unbelievably uncomfortable and horrible or whether it's quite nice.

One of the reasons I don't see eye to eye with Women's Lib is that women have it all on a plate if only they knew it. They don't have to be pretty either.

There are moments when things just break apart and not really for very valid reasons, either. But they just change your life and make you go in different directions.

I haven't got ambitions. Actually, I'm determined not to die until I get very old. I want to be a great-great-great-grandmother.

European films were what it was about for me - the sensations I needed, the depth, the storytelling, the characters, the directors, and the freedom that you can't really find in American films.

I think that most actors don't have very good opinions of themselves.

When I take on something , I take the whole thing on.It's not even a question of separating "Oh, am I going to be naked" I go with my whole person.

Close girlfriends I don't have necessarily, as an actress. Perhaps there is a thing of competition there, you know, when you're doing the same things, and you're the same age. I could be with younger actors, but woman of my age probably - there is and there isn't, one doesn't like to think of it, but I think there is a sense of competition. Which is good, also.

Because one has the animal instinct to seek out the people that suits one - you see people that go on life's journeys and get muddled along the way. If you look at their lives they've always gone with the wrong people ... can you say it's the wrong people - I don't know ...

I think what we do best, in the artistic world, are the things where we're handicapped.

By trying to control everything we become very neurotic, more and more desperate. It's a huge tragic thing.

I am not qualified to be a Dame. To be Dame you have to represent England in a way that I don't.

What beauty brings is huge. It brings great privilege, great power and potential to do many things. If you are beautiful, doors open for you; people smile at you; you are accepted in places where others aren't. So the relationship that people have with beauty, in a sense, is almost deforming.

I remember my father saying to me once, 'I finally know how to describe you, Charlotte. You're prickly.' And he was right - prickly is a very good description. If I had to be an animal, I'd probably be a porcupine.

We all have loads of information. What an actor does is bring it to the surface. I jump without a net because that's how I am. The information comes out because I am brave enough to allow it. I'm not brave as a human being in everyday life. I'm brave when I'm acting.

Usually, watching yourself is pretty awful. People think we all love watching our own films. We don't. We cringe away from it.

I've lived through deaths in my family and I've lived through separations in my family so those are the big ones. Those are the ones that press the biggest buttons in human beings' lives.

I could have been a superstar in America - I was certainly taken out there. But I said, 'No way, Jose, I'm not staying here in this madhouse.'

To grieve is something extremely difficult, we don't even know how to begin to grieve, and I don't know how you can be taught to grieve.

I could have carried on in comedy. But my life was dark.

I'm not very good at talking and being with people and being gregarious and outgoing. I love people, but I have great difficulty doing it.

When a subject pops into a director's head, you either fit in there somewhere, or you don't. An actor is only who he is. Especially as you get older, there's not as much of a range of potentially feasible parts.

We must be very careful when we say that somebody giving you compliments about your looks should be offensive. I think women really should look at why they're being offended by that.

I think the reason I have secrets is because there are a lot of things I haven't been able to let out, and I'm able to let them out through the screen and this medium.

I was incredibly fatalistic. I just thought, 'If it works, it works.' But I've always been like that. I've never been easily impressed, and I've never thought I didn't deserve something. If I got it, then I deserved it.

You don't need the painful memories, because either you've resolved them. Denying always makes them want to come back. Denial is a mechanism that doesn't work. But allowing them to come back in little by little, those memories, you can begin to be quite comfortable with them, and it's even nice to have that as part of the map of your life.

French women have been made beautiful by the French people - they're very aware of their bodies, the way they move and speak, they're very confident of their sexuality. French society's made them like that.

You can never really judge your work because once it's done, it's done.

We can never know ... But maybe it's because no black actors merited being nominated.Why put people into categories?

What I am doing is not acting. I am playing myself.

When I moved to Paris in the '70s, there wasn't very much going on in film in England. So when I started doing French films, there was a natural movement toward the kind of films I wanted to do. It wasn't the reason I came, but it so happened that I stepped into a time and place that actually corresponded to what I wanted. That sometimes happens in life. And it was rather beautiful.

I felt very special in Paris, more special than I felt in London. I love London for different reasons. I've always been close to London, being English. But somehow, there's something special about living as an Englishwoman in Paris.

Painting and photography keep the creative channel open, and for an actor, it's to keep alive, it's to keep awake, it's to keep watching, it's to keep feeling, it's to keep enjoying, to keep that sensuality of feeling alive.

Ever since I was a small child, I've had this feeling - it's in my nature, and so it's not even pretentious - that if everyone's going one way, I will go the other, just by some kind of spirit of defiance.