Isabelle Huppert: I was raised and I was going to school in the suburb...

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.

Isabelle Huppert

distance order interesting

I'm curious and you know, I really think cinema is strong medium that allows you to go to so many different mental countries, not just geographical countries. As far as it allows me to express something of my own truth, it's fine for me. I can go to the moon.

Isabelle Huppert

strong moon country

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.

Isabelle Huppert

special mean directors

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

Isabelle Huppert

film stills

The big problem in the world is when people are forced to be in a totally foreign context.

Isabelle Huppert

problem people world

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

Isabelle Huppert

real laughing people

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

Isabelle Huppert

here-and-now repeats principles

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

Isabelle Huppert

over-you compassion want

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

Isabelle Huppert

skeptic bits believer

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.

Isabelle Huppert

chekhov saws numbers

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

Isabelle Huppert

intellectual people thinking

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!

Isabelle Huppert

cameras listening beautiful

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.

Isabelle Huppert

voice space giving

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.

Isabelle Huppert

miracle play two

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.

Isabelle Huppert

matter want way

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.

Isabelle Huppert

done path opportunity

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

Isabelle Huppert

decision want desire

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

Isabelle Huppert

core film musical

I've done many, many French movies and many, many English movies. I think it frees something when you don't talk in your mother language, but I also think you withdraw something as well. I'm a French actress, and sometimes I speak in English-speaking roles. For me, being an actress was always being a traveler. It goes together.

Isabelle Huppert

mother together thinking

Sometimes, an actress maybe knows how to think.

Isabelle Huppert

actresses sometimes thinking

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.