Isabelle Huppert quotes:

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

Perhaps Europeans are a bit more skeptic whereas Americans are more believers.

Acting is a way of living out one's insanity.

But it wasn't just a technical approach towards the piano, studying the music for this film was also a way of approaching the soul of the film, because the film is really about the soul of Schubert and the soul of Bach.

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.

But it wasn't just a technical approach towards the piano, studying the music for this film was also a way of approaching the soul of the film, because the film is really about the soul of Schubert and the soul of Bach

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.

But theatre is always a difficult experience.

The Greeks already understood that there was more interest in portraying an unusual character than a usual character - that is the purpose of films and theatre.

I think being an actress is more how to cope with the fact that you can't do anything else than to express a talent. It's a way of being untalented for anything

Firstly I did it in this huge theatre in Avignon, then to smaller places, then bigger places. You have to change the volume of the voice, give more or less. The way you have to relate to space makes it like sculpture.

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 like to take these unusual characters and then make them as normal as possible, because we all know that the tragedy and the abnormal always hides itself behind the normal

In a very complex way, things have improved in the dramatic field. Before you had the good and the bad and you couldn't mingle them. Now it's more ambiguous

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.

The Greeks already understood that there was more interest in portraying an unusual character than a usual character - that is the purpose of films and theatre

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

Balzac, you know, our great Balzac, he wrote interesting things about how in literature you keep distance in order to express great feelings. You have to keep a distance - and it's exactly the same with acting.

Once you have made the decision to do the film, once you have identified the desire and all the deep and personal, intimate, artistic reasons why you want to do the film, then it's more a matter of how to do things

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

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

I think being an actress is more how to cope with the fact that you can't do anything else than to express a talent. It's a way of being untalented for anything.

In a very complex way, things have improved in the dramatic field. Before you had the good and the bad and you couldn't mingle them. Now it's more ambiguous.

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

I like to take these unusual characters and then make them as normal as possible, because we all know that the tragedy and the abnormal always hides itself behind the normal.

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.

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.

If I seem detached or distant, it's because I think this is a more exact reproduction of life, where you hide as much as you show. When I see a scene in which feelings get loudly exteriorized, I say to myself, 'Well, at least this never happens to me.' I very rarely go through this type of expression. Most of the time things are hidden or at least much more subdued.

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

I always thought that's the exact metaphor, the perfect metaphor for acting. To go blind, to ignore the danger, and to totally trust.

When you're an actress you are in a very specific position, cerebrally, I would think you know. You are a thinking person but you are in a certain perception of the world between really being conceptual and completely stupid. So you are in between, with a lot of intuition and instinct. And that's not completely being intellectual because I think intuition is more blurred. It comes from intuition. Instinct. More than really reasoning.

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.

Even for the most difficult scenes, and there are difficult scenes in the film, and because Michael Haneke is such a great film-maker - I think a great film-maker is not only being inspired, but how to do it, how to make it as real as possible, knowing that it's not real

To me acting and doing movies is really strongly about the present time. It's all about when you do it. It's to create this feeling of extreme awareness and concentration. Because it doesn't happen without an extreme concentration, when you are completely immersed and focused on that.

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

But on the whole, nothing requires unbearable energy for me, it's just a normal thing

By definition, acting is improvisation, even if you follow the lines. You invent what you do, when you do it.

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

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.

But theatre is always a difficult experience

Firstly I did it in this huge theatre in Avignon, then to smaller places, then bigger places. You have to change the volume of the voice, give more or less. The way you have to relate to space makes it like sculpture

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

What people think improvisation is and non-improvisation is, it's nothing to do with what you like or dislike. It's all about how it happens with certain directors and certain scenes. That's the way it works. It's not something, in general, that you can decide.

When you come to do the film, it is not the time to wonder why you do it. It's just how to do it

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

I was the youngest of five, and I think my mother always knew I was meant to be an actress.

I never had any barriers coming from my family. Just encouragement.

Well, my mother, she made me apply for a school where I was supposed to learn how to type. She said, well, instead of going to demonstrate she should at least [learn], because, everything was on strike. So we had to learn something in the meantime.

I was raised and I was going to school in the suburbs of Paris. And so we, I didn't really go to the riots, to the barricade. I was too young, actually. Rather young.

I don't have time, because I still have so many films to see.

When I hear myself, I don't know how I sound.

I saw Chekhov a number of times in English, and I thought that it translates very well in English, for some reason, from the Russian to the English.

Of course you have to create the conditions of a certain belief. And maybe ignoring something that you don't want to see, at least for the time of the shooting.

To be a great director, what does it mean exactly? It's not only about a great director, but also about being able to rely on the very special chemistry that goes between them. It not only has to be a great director, but the great director has to make his relationship to you, the actor, very special.

To be "here and now," in principle, is just for once. And then you have to repeat that.

One job is to be an actor, the other job is to be a spectator.

You don't want to cry over yourself, you don't want to have compassion about yourself. It's not the right place.

Sometimes over the years, you know, things come to surface.

We all pretend to be very strong, and then in a fraction, you can just break down, at least for me.

Sometimes, an actress maybe knows how to think.

I know some real intellectual people who might laugh, very close friends who might laugh when I'm said to be an intellectual.

I don't think I'm that intellectual.

Am I an intellectual? I don't think so. Less than people sometimes think, I have to say. But more than some others think.

Like all school students, I think I did a play in my school. The common things, I would say. Nothing really exceptional.

Sometimes maybe children also fulfill their parents' secrets desire.

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

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.

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

I think that a sense of humor of an actor comes through most of the time. Maybe some actors have less than others, and I have it, I think. It's my nature.

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.

It was sometimes 60 degrees [Celsius], but it's very strange, cinema makes you forget reality most of the time. You are more concerned about your inner feelings, or your work.

One would expect an actress to stand onscreen mostly as a caricature. If she would say, "I'm selling shoes," you would believe her. She says it and it creates this fiction, non-fiction perception of the film. People believe it because she says it. If she said, "I'm a butcher," people would believe it too, I think.