Xavier Dolan Quotes

A movie that is unable to elicit emotion isn't a movie.

For me, 'Mommy' was about developing very humane characters that would be very credible and endearing and work onscreen.

'Titanic' made me want to tell stories ... To have all these characters and costumes and have ambition and think big and have dreams ... It came at a very troubled period of my life.

I think of 'Mommy' as very simplistic or not simplistic, but I wish for the style to actually work with what you see onscreen and what you feel in that very moment. I hope we did not disrespect the characters by being too flamboyant when it's not necessary.

I think that when you're in love, you progressively go back to who you are.

We are all different human beings, and we all have different backgrounds, and we stem from different social strata. That is what defines how you hear people talk, how you want to quote them when you speak. We all have different fears and doubts and complexes and this is what shapes the way we see other people. Especially characters.

Facts are, directors are not thinking of me; they think I only act in my films, because they're stupid. Or they think I'm a control freak, that I will try to, I don't know, pimp their scripts and just change everything, which I will never do.

What motivates every other decision artistically or technically is the acting. This is what motivates everything. Never can a camera move be incompatible with the emotion of the actor at that moment. The movement, the style, the atmosphere, everything is dictated by the actor.

'Heartbeats' is a film on people magnifying and subliming reality when they're in love. Hence the overstylized look, the aesthetics, the robes, the dresses, the vintage, hipster-ish look: All of this is voluntary. I'm not a hipster. I'm not!

I got a part in a package of commercials for this big drugstore from the age of 6 to 10. For four years I shot those commercials, and old ladies would stop me on the street and grab my cheeks. That's how it started.

The problems I have with a flawed script are always revealed in the editing room.

I've been recording forever. I'm a watcher. I'm a stalker. I love everything about people. It's always been a passion for me to observe.

I have a strange relationship with influences because mine are mostly literary or painters or poets, who I'll even quote. I don't do tributes to cinema.

The father figure doesn't impress me. I have a very friendly relationship with my father, but that wasn't always the case. My mother had custody, and I only saw him every other weekend. I never knew him well enough for him to inspire me.

Here's the thing with the costumes for 'Mommy': Given the background and social strata that the characters come from, you can't really imagine that they've gone shopping lately, so we went for that very normcore, fashionless era in history, the early 2000s, which was completely transitional.

I'm very much a hypochondriac, worried about dying, and not having enough time to work with the people I want to work with and being fulfilled as an actor.

I was a very violent kid. I think movies and writing and art have been a way of channeling this.

For me, hipsterism is for one to appropriate the codes of a social class or another milieu that wasn't theirs originally, in order to define their personality through something different and unique. Which is why a lot of hipsters live downtown, and they're dressed as farmers. Then you have the Oscar Wilde hipster: the dandy.

My extreme characters are in a state of rebellion or who are being ostracized or being misunderstood, or misfits or trying to fit in and fighting for their rights to love, live, and co-exist. They sort of mirror my own demons.

Sometimes I find it tiresome to write actions and describe the scene in a very intricate way so that every crew member understands where we are going - that I can find a little bit long and tiresome. But dialogue is just all my life. There's no way I could ever be challenged, not challenged, but I'm always so happy to write dialogue.

I hadn't watched any Hitchcock movies when I made 'Tom at the Farm,' except for 'Vertigo' when I was 8 years old. I don't have a sophisticated film knowledge, but I have seen the legacy of classic movies in broader entertainment.

I don't really mind not being a part of a film - because if there is no part for me, I will never force myself upon a film. I feel like it's just a distraction. If it is not organically incorporated into the story, it just feels like a stupid appearance, like a sort of wink. I hate that.

I love doing costumes. The costume is an actor's first line, so it's gotta be right!

It's ludicrous to think people work for you: 'a film by ... ' doesn't exist. Directed by, maybe, but it's a film from a collective, a group of people whom you consult and seek your counsel and advice and vice versa, too.

I love women in my heart but not in my undies.

In 'Laurence Anyways,' Nathalie Baye is Laurence's mother, and she is quite an awful mother. Still, she is the only one in the end who truly accepts her daughter.

I'd love to perform with other actors and act with actors, true actors. I would like to be in a movie and have full room for acting.

It's important to see how people see your work and how they feel about it. I know a lot of directors who are like, 'I never read reviews,' and I'm like, 'Yeah I can tell.'

When you're adapting, you are working on someone else's problem that they have already solved. The work has been fine-tuned and read countless times, and you're just arriving at the end and taking what you want, so of course it is the regal way to moviemaking. Plays are just the ideal scripts - the structure is there and waiting for you.

The scene of independent cinema is already a large scene in America, and not in a negative way, but it's cluttered. It's very populated with just American films, so the room left for foreign movies is not extremely vast. The American public also does not really read. They don't read subtitles. But we're like that in Canada, too.

My first language is French. I just love words so much, and in French it feels like I can say whatever I want however I want.

I'm looking for a person who understands my language and speaks it. A person who, without being a pariah, will question not only the rights and the values of the marginalized, but also those of the people who claim to be normal.

I design all of the costumes for my movies, actually.

The motivation for making movies is that people actually see them.

That I am today the face of Louis Vuitton almost seems like a twist of fate. You dream back to front, wanting the rewards before putting the work in. And then you work, get on with life, and just sometimes these childhood dreams have a way of catching up with you. This is a true privilege for which I am eternally grateful.

My aunt Julie was a production manager, and she heard of an opening. Some show was looking for children to run around the house or whatever. I auditioned and got the part, and I showed up in all of my monstrous energy, bouncing everywhere like an electron.

I have the impression that every time I'm heartbroken, I leave a bit of myself behind. I am the believer. I go back and do the same mistakes over and over again and sign them proudly.

I'm sick of people imposing cultural references and influences on me, but I'm not sick of people talking about my age.

Music was the only voice of cinema for a very long time before we had sound; it's organically linked to cinema itself.

Six years, I didn't act. Then I wrote myself a role - I won prizes all over the world.

I don't think the way I portray mother's and son's relationships has anything to do with my age or generation. It has to do with what I lived with my own mother and what it's transformed into and the point of view it has given me on mothers and women. The way I was brought up with women. It's all about personal background.

I feel like Adele is a diva. Not in the bad way. She is one of the greatest voices of this industry and of her own art. What she offers is so unique that she's risen to such a status that very few artists can enjoy.

Of all the labels and tags and epithets people have forced upon me, there's one I don't dislike. I get called the 'enfant terrible.' In every article, it's always there. So I have to give that a meaning.

Orson Welles was lazy. He was a late bloomer.

No one knows me in the States because the movies have been released in such an awkward, irregular fashion, all by different distributors. There is no continuity.

I always wrote. I've written stories since I was 9. We didn't have a computer at home, but my aunt Magda had one. Whenever I'd go to her place, I was in the basement working on her computer, writing stories.

Men are born privileged in the scale of things - I'm generalizing, but it's true. Women have to define themselves in the eyes of men. They have to fight for their rights, especially in a society that will pretend that there is no fight or no battle, that it's a cliche, that feminists are reactionary, all these things.

The nature and the DNA of IMAX has been redefined in the past years to shoot these huge blockbusters. But I think that it's not the sole purpose of IMAX to capture cars exploding in your face.

All my life, I heard, 'Stop daydreaming,' 'Get over yourself,' 'You'll never get there,' 'Aim lower,' 'You'll hurt yourself,' from teachers, family, and friends.

When I first got to Cannes, I was very insecure about everything, so I put on this extravagant facade. Can you blame me? I was 19.

When I write a film, I have already made the trailer

I don't master my craft or my style enough to have any philosophy or dogma to which I feel I belong.