I always wanted to write a story about a couple coming to that moment in their relationship where either they keep on going or it ends.
It's a typical story: you think of something, it stays in the back of your head for a while, and then you finally do it.
Some people have bigger egos than others. You have to take a lot of abuse, and take it in and not respond, because you don't want conflicts on the movie, you don't want to start screaming at people even when they treat you - even when they're not behaving properly, because you want them to do their job, and keep on doing it.
My dad has always been such a great dad, and he's brought so much culture to my life. He dragged me to see every single movie at the cinématheque as a kid. I saw everything from Star Wars to Bergman.
I definitely didn't fit in perfectly to the school system. I was raised with such freedom of speech and thinking.
I didn't really fit with other kids. I had problems in school all my life and problems with authority. But my parents never did drugs or anything. They just believed in freedom in the best sense of the word.
Maybe I would get the chance to be financed for a small romantic comedy, but a war movie by a 28-year-old woman about Japanese soldiers? No one was going to go for that. It's easy to just steal an idea because it's very safe.
I think the first sign of friendship is a manifestation of how you separate from your parents and try to find a new family on your own. It's the first sign of growing.
Basically, editing is done in rehearsal and in the writing process and in the acting, so it's very, very tricky, very, very tricky.
Most of our life is miscommunication, and when you add a language barrier to it, it just becomes total mayhem and confusion... It just adds to it with all of the cultural differences. It could be an American family meeting another American family and you could still have a total clash. With family, it's like visiting another planet.
It's very hard to sustain love, that's for sure. But the more you have your own life and your own self, and the less you give away who you are, the more men are attracted to you. The more desperate you are for a relationship, the worse it is to find a healthy relationship. Because the minute you become one-and-a-half people instead of two, it's a mess. Nobody's happy. Keeping your identity and having your own life and your own self, that's the only way I can make my life and sustain life.
I went to film school to make films just because you're in control of the story.
I was having this awful nightmare that I was 32. And then I woke up and I was 23. So relieved. And then I woke up for real, and I was 32.
The condition of being an actress can be unbearable.
I had to trick people into giving me money for my first film. Making a romantic comedy is easier and more expected from a woman than it is to make a drama about a Japanese warrior.
I wasn't born an artist. I was really good in science as a kid. I probably shouldn't have been an artist because I'm much more interested in science. But I was raised by artists. I can't really escape it.
I don't know any woman in France who doesn't talk to firemen and smile at them, because they're always so sweet, and they're wearing those tight pants. Even my dad looks at their ass when they walk down the street!
In your thirties, you're much more comfortable with sex. First of all, sex is something you've done more. You know you can have sex just to have sex; you can have sex with friends; you can have sex with people you love; you can have sex with people you don't like, but the sex is good. And you can joke about sex much more.
I hate that whole Tarantino thing about beating up women and killing them and chopping up. Just because you have the mind of a 12 year old.
Reality and love are almost contradictory for me.
It's terrifying. Women make their first film, their second film, and then it's like a nightmare, right, to make the third or fourth? I mean, it's almost like men can have three films in a row that don't do that well and keep on going.
I don't want to go to the Bahamas on holiday. I hate islands. I want to go to Brittany, where it's cold and raining, and there's nothing fancy about it.
Baby, you are gonna miss that plane.
When you're an actress, you become this thing in people's hands that people are trying to manipulate. I cannot stand it.
I love acting and I still want to do it, but I've such an instinct for directing, it's something that comes naturally to me. It's why I'm here on this planet.
