Isabelle Huppert Quotes

I think movies say a lot [about real life], even more than theater. It says a lot about the invisible, that movies are so fascinating. The camera lens is like a microscope that goes beyond the surface. It's like you're exploring a secret, so you explore the director's secret, you explore the actor's secret, and therefore you explore the universe's secrets.

Going through this musical experience really helped us to understand the core of the film.

Yes, he wanted me to do Funny Games before, which I didn't want to do because the film was very theoretical - the way people experience violence on screen. There was very little space for fiction, it was more like a sacrifice for the actors than anything else.

The choosing of a role is so difficult for me. That's the real challenge: to choose the role, not to do the role. Once you've chosen them, the process is much easier.

But theatre is always a difficult experience.

I don't get many good offers. I like to follow the same kind of path I follow in France. If I don't feel the movie is very original or has a good amount of potential, I don't do it. In the films I've done I can feel I'm part of a specific universe, but those sorts of opportunities are quite rare.

I never wondered whether I should be a stage actress or a movie actress.

If on paper one would say, "You're gonna spend three weeks in Death Valley," you say, "No, I'm not going to be able to." Very often, very quickly you forget about it.

I don't know if you ever say to yourself that you want to be an actress. It eventually becomes a social function - you are an actress and you make a living out of it, but at the beginning it's more a matter of how to survive, or how to exist in a certain way.

There are many different ways of being funny. I'm not sure that there's so many different ways of being dramatic.

For an actress there is no greater gift than having a camera in front of you, listening to the most beautiful music in the world and just being looked at!

I did a film very quickly, and then a lot of work for television, and then I did stage work.

My mom's a Catholic, and my dad's a Jew, and they didn't want anything to do with anything.

A film is the reflection of the soul of its creator,

For a long time I have compared cinema to music, I think cinema has a lot to do with the rhythm of music.

Before I do a play I say that I hope it's going to be for as short a time as possible but, once you do it, it is a paradoxical pleasure. One evening out of two there are five minutes of a miracle and for those five minutes you want to do it again and again. It's like a drug.

It really helps you to go through difficult situations by just thinking about it as being a big amount of work which you have to solve how to do. For example, I don't feel very inspired when I act, I just act. That's it.

But someone like Claude Chabrol tries to make a connection between the society in which we live and the social reasons which make monsters out of some people.

Some roles are easier to choose, some roles are more difficult because they are more daring. Sometimes you have to dare.

For me, making films is like being on vacation, it's a nice walk. But theatre is like mountaineering. You never know whether you're going to fall off or make it to the top.