- Sissi sticks to me just like oatmeal.
- Life must go on. My work gives me strength.
- [Alain Delon] Delon? Nothing is colder than a love that has passed away.
- Memories are the best things in life, I think.
- You must not quote to me what I once said. I am wiser now.
- I've worked with the biggest tyrants: [Otto Preminger] Preminger, [Orson Welles] Welles, [Luchino Visconti] Visconti. Despots - they have contempt for most actors. When they meet someone who stands up to them, everything's great.
- I am nothing in life, but everything on the screen.
- One can remain eternally young if each day, one grows rich by marvelous moments. I am convinced that at the end of my life, all these sufferings and all these joys, the memories, the goods like the bad ones, give us a heat which resembles those that give us and which love us.
- I cannot live without having a role to work.
- I wish to present myself in front of the camera, each time under the features of a different woman, I would like to live and apprehend the problems, the conflicts, the feelings and the impulses of women radically different from me.
- I am not afraid of nothing in the world. Except ego.
- I want to learn, I want to develop, I want to discover all that is in me.
- [In a letter to her friend Simone Signoret] I don't know anything about life, but everything about cinema.
- [on Inferno (1964)] During these tests I realized that Clouzot was the most difficult director I had ever met. Difficult not in a negative way - he is never satisfied. He's a perfectionist who wants every tone, light and gesture to be exactly, down to every nuance, as he'd imagined it before. I wondered, "How will I stand 18 weeks of shooting with Henri-Georges?"
- [interview from May 1981, asked what she considers her best roles] Leni in Group Portrait with a Lady (1977) by Heinrich Böll was an important role for me, but definitely not the best known. In general, I like fairly horrible jobs: The Infernal Trio (1974), for example, where I didn't live up to my usual image and where I didn't have to be "nice". I've kept great memories of The Trial (1962) with Orson Welles. Today he does publicity. He's seated, fat and round at a table and he raises his glass of wine. He doesn't make films any more. He says, "I can't play what I want to and what's offered to me I don't want to do." He's quite right.
- [1962 interview] I've always wanted to do theatre. I think that when you really love this job, you have to do theatre - it's essential. You can't just do cinema all the time. It's too monotonous in my opinion to always do cinema. It's very easy for me to say, "You have to do theatre". You must also have the chance to start, I had a lot of chances when I started the cinema with my mother in Germany - I had a lot of opportunities but then you have to go it alone. My big break in theatre was Visconti, and who offered me "C'est dommage qu'elle soit une p" by John Ford in Paris. I was very afraid because I wasn't sure my French was good enough - it was fine for speaking in the street or for life in general - but never for the stage - it's an almost classic text, a Shakespearean text; he pushed me and helped me a lot and we started the rehearsals in Paris and I did my first play. During "la putain" in Paris, Sacha Pitoëff came one evening and saw the play and he offered me the chance to tour with The Seagull. I didn't give him an answer immediately - I was very happy and flattered, it was amazing, a play by Chekhov - but I'd never done a tour and I knew it would last four months, a very, very long time and it would be very tiring, but nevertheless desire is a lot stronger than fear!
- [1962 interview] In Austria and Germany, I couldn't continue and didn't want to continue any longer doing those films that I'd made; I wanted to get out of that straitjacket that they'd put me in; I just couldn't do what I wanted to do - I wasn't getting offered what I wanted. I didn't have any desire to do any more cinema there, but I have to say, honestly, that next year, or in perhaps two years' time, I'd like to do some work in the theatre in Vienna or in Munich or in Hamburg or in Berlin with Gründgens [Gustaf Gründgens] - there are marvelous theatre directors in Germany and they do wonderful work in the theatre, as they do in Paris too. But cinema there - no.
- [1970 interview] The Things of Life (1970) is the best film I've done; there's The Trial (1962), there's Boccaccio '70 (1962) with Luchino Visconti, there's The Cardinal (1963) with Preminger - I've had the chance to work with some great directors.
- You can't always make The Things of Life (1970); you can't always make Max and the Junkmen (1971) - you make concessions.
- [on coming from a family of actors] It helps a bit but on the other hand it's difficult; I didn't want to be helped by my parents because they're actors - my father, mother, my grandmother - everybody was an actor in my house. You want to be alone, you want to do it alone, without help. And my mother didn't want me at all to do cinema or theatre. But she was intelligent and sensitive enough to not stand in my way when I was offered my first film, alongside her moreover, at the age of fourteen. In fact, we made five films together. I never acted with my father, unfortunately.
- [on advice she would give to younger actors] I've absolutely no advice to give. There are a lot of things in this profession you have to learn and there are lots of things, perhaps the most important things, which you can't learn. You also have to have a lot of luck in this job - there are thousands of actors who are enormously talented and never get a break. You just can't give advice, it's impossible. I've heard colleagues say when asked for advice: "Don't do this job!" I would never say that because it would be very dishonest. For me, this is the most wonderful job in the world and I wouldn't know how to do anything else.
- [accepting her Best Actress César for That Most Important Thing: Love (1975)] Thank you very much. I'm very happy and very proud. I'm especially thinking this evening of a man who taught me my job, who was my teacher and my very good friend; he will be happy for me, it's Luchino Visconti.
- [accepting her Best Actress César for A Simple Story (1978)] Thank you. I'd like to share this César with my friend Claude Sautet and Jean-Loup Dabadie. We'll cut it into three!
- [asked what kind of characters she wants to play] I don't care. Whatever interests me. If it's a great role. Whether it's a period or modern part - I don't care. I wouldn't want to do six costume films in a row - of course not. I'm looking for the greatest variety possible. That's why I just said that I don't care - if you said to me now Ophelia, and tomorrow Lady Macbeth or Hélène in The Things of Life (1970) or Lily in Max and the Junkmen (1971), a prostitute - these are all wonderful roles. Lily, in particular, is a role I love because it's the furthest from myself.
- [on Ludwig (1973)] There exists no common thread between the Sissi of long ago and my role of today. Sissi was a crazy young girl whilst the Empress of Austria is a mature woman. I'm going to play this role by giving the character all her consistency. I'm discovering in this character of Élisabeth character traits fairly familiar to me. Whether I like it or not, the Sissi imprint, which I've struggled so much to undo, will weigh very heavily on my attempts to truthfully portray my Élisabeth.
- [on The Last Train (1973)] This role is certainly, among my most recent films, my favourite. The young girl acts, thinks, reacts and loves exactly as I would have done myself. It's the best role offered to me for some years. I've grabbed the chance to shout out against the brutality of the Nazis, who, even today, are still a part of society in Germany. Young Anna goes for broke which is close to the way I lead my life . By nature, I don't recoil when faced with risk. I have professional and personal reasons for taking this role.
- I have the feeling that I was born in Vienna in order to live in Paris. I want to be completely French in the way I live, love, sleep and dress.
- I'm afraid of serious mistakes. First of all in life and then in my work. There are mistakes which aren't very serious - a mistake in doing a film which fails and which is panned by critics is serious but not extremely serious. Failing at something in my private life is much more serious.
- [on That Most Important Thing: Love (1975)] There's three quarters of this character completely separate from me and one quarter close to me.
- [on her return to German cinema with Group Portrait with a Lady (1977)] It's been a bit strange, this return to Berlin - a lot of fear, lots of apprehension, despite my desire to make this film and to play this role. Leni's a very German woman, with whom I can identify in quite a lot of ways. She has a strength to live and a strength to love and it's that which makes her survive in this horrible hell of Berlin of 1945 - during and after that horrible war. She's a person who can sometimes seem to be passive or a dreamer - she has her own little world and something profound, an inner strength to survive, to love and to believe in positive things, despite everything - despite everything she lives through, everything she experiences, everything she loses, despite all the disappointments, all the horrors she experiences which you see in the film. I enjoyed it very much. It shows a Germany crying and wailing in pain, which has perhaps never really been shown before. It's Germany and Germans of '40 and '45, of Heinrich Böll, and I found this the most beautiful thing in the film. The film moved me a lot, it's very profound and I think it's a very important film for German cinema. Aleksandar Petrovic, who's Yugoslavian, made this film staying very faithful to the novel - the film's extremely German and I'm convinced that a German director wouldn't have been able to make the film in a more convincing and faithful manner.
- [1976 interview] I always watched rushes and for years and years I felt terrible when I didn't see them, but since The Old Gun (1975) I've forced myself not to watch them. And it's better. I'm never happy where that's concerned. And Claude Sautet threw me out of a projection one time a long time ago - he was right - he said to me, "There's no point in you watching the rushes, in watching your work - you're never happy, so leave!" And so I left!
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