Juliette Binoche Quotes

When you really put your heart in the work, you don't think of how you look. And I think that's the beauty of it.

When you make a film, it's a bet. You don't know how the film is going to be, anyway.

Acting is a tough business, and you need to be in good shape mentally and physically.

I believe such illumination comes if you're open to the surprises the universe throws at you. You must be able to let go of the past, whatever success you may have seen, whatever your comfort, whatever your habits. To me, that's the key to loving life: Enabling yourself to step bravely into the unknown. Only there will you find yourself again.

Being a famous actress may give you a sense of being important, but believe me, it's just an illusion.

I believe that being an actress or being involved in a movie has to be a life experience, otherwise why go for it? I have to change me, and I have to learn things, and I have to push me and my limits. By acting, I find a freedom inside of a prison in a way.

I move on stage differently. The more you act, anyway, the more you live, your perception of life becomes more and more accurate.

I love the unknown. I think because it brings fear, and to embrace fear is the best feeling.

I live for the present always. I accept this risk. I don't deny the past, but it's a page to turn.

It's challenging as an actor to let go but I had some pleasure out of it too. To not have the effort of having to present myself is quite liberating.

When I'm in the movie, I'm entirely in the movie. When I'm on the set, I'm 200 per cent there; when I'm at home, I'm 200 per cent at home.

I am not a great French woman. George Sand, Marguerite Duras and Simone de Beauvoir are great French women.

I won't do something just for the sake of working.

My ambition is to have beautiful encounters, not to make money.

Before I thought there was a common denominator between my films - as if all my characters were sisters - but I'm not so sure now.

I like intensity. If it's too mellow, I feel like, bleah. I like intensity, because it's way of reaching spaces inside of you, and it's my need of knowledge, of knowing about myself regardless.

Sometimes I call directors. Sometimes I just meet with them. It just happens. It's not that I'm pushy. It comes naturally. But I go ahead. I don't stay in my armchair, waiting for the phone to ring.

If you told me tomorrow that I couldn't act anymore, it wouldn't bother me. I have only one wish: to meet the man of my life.

If you have everything, then you don't want to go on. It's the lacking that makes you search for something better.

I was used to theatre classes. I studied with my mother; she was a theatre teacher and directed, too, so it was very family-like. Then I studied with a great teacher in Paris, and she was wonderful; she pushed me, but she was a warm soul.

There is a secret, I think. When you are front of a camera there is something that happens. Some relationship, some movement, some strange kind of suspension. That's where you find the layer in yourself that is duplicated in everyone. And when you get it right, if you can imagine all the hearts beating in one beat, it's like that. It's beautiful.

You have to have the courage to wait, to say no, ... And thats difficult. This job is very uncertain, and its frightening.

I want to know why I'm alive. I want to understand. It's like exploration; it's like someone being interested in a place and its history, digging into the earth and looking for it, searching - it's a passion.

I like being a mother, and I want to be involved in my work, so I have to make choices. If you're a film actress, your career is from 20 to 45, but you can still dream.

I need relationships, but sometimes when I am in one I feel claustrophobic. It is about feeling that I still have my freedom, that I have choices. I don't look back on the past because I like to live in the present. I know this makes some people think I probably never cared, but I need my freedom and I like to keep moving.

I think it's the same simple thing for everyone - to be happy, and have love in your life.

But, you know, when I choose a film I need to believe in it and believe I can do something special with it, and after a while that means not trying to judge or analyze why I should do it. You have to follow this intuition thing, which is a mystery to me.

I've been changed watching films or reading books or hearing music, and that helps you to live your life.

I sometimes feel like I could do another job. Anything. Maybe because as an actress you're playing different characters, everything feels possible.

Oh, I'll be forgotten too, don't worry.

I like independence, I like creating my own world, not being in a system. There are more possibilities, I think.

I don't believe in coincidence.

Changing someone's life is not the best, is not wanting to change the other life. It is being who you are that changes another's life. Do you understand?

My experience has nothing to do with creation, I don't think, even though maturity is helpful. In a creation process, there's an intuition that takes you and if it's nourished with awareness and experience, it's great.

The strong is not the one who can put on the blades at a glance, and the one who is able to raise a smile from his knees!

I'm a fighter as a mother. I'm fighting to be a mother, but I cannot say no to my passion because it's me, as well.

I would say I'm humanly engaged.

What I need is to express my passion for life ... It's movement I'm interested in, the life in me, the life in humanity.

It's not a struggle to be on a diet. You feel lighter, and your spirit is lighter, too. But I love chocolate, and I allow myself to have chocolate. That doesn't go against a diet for me.

I am not a woman staying at home.

I never felt being an actor or making a movie was an easy thing to do.

I think I am pretty much melancholic.

I'm not even aware of my success. Success is such an illusion.

I don't like films giving me answers. I like films that are provoking me, that are making me feel not only being in an easy place.

I like travelling and if I have to come to Hollywood to make a movie I will, but otherwise I'd never move there. It's very much an industry town and that doesn't really interest me.

For me, real, truthful moments come from a place that I don't know. If somebody was telling me, "You're going to lift your face like this, you're going to do this ... " No! I don't want to know. Just let me live it.

As actors, we are so privileged to do what we do and to give to the world and to choose the subject we want to say to the world.

For me, habit is just a synonym for death.

Choosing to be in the theatre was a way to put my roots down somewhere with other people. It was a way to choose a new family.

As an actor, I have to be fulfilled in the roles that I play; it has to be a journey for me to learn something or involve myself.

My private life is very private, and I have chosen not to live in America or England, where you are so exposed and can't fight against it.

As an actress we don't beat one another. It's whoever's right for the part.

Attraction is beyond our will or ideas sometimes.

I really don't think that the Oscar changed my career much because I didn't want it to.

As an actress, I think there is always a political consciousness there.

My only ambition is to be true every moment I am living.

Movies are open doors, and at every door, I change character and life.

George Clooney is trying his own way but he's struggling too because he has to deal with America. Yet, if he has a foot in Europe, it's not for nothing.

A director could be 20 years old and an actor 60, or vice versa; it doesn't matter. It's about connecting sensibility and energy together, and having a vision that goes together and anchors the film as you go along.

But I think it's a little different in Europe, because 40 is really the best age for a woman. That's when we hit our peak and become this ripe fruit.