JULIE DELPY

Too many women throw themselves into romance because they're afraid of being single, then start making compromises and losing their identity. I won't do that.

I love the acting process. What I don't like is what's around it. The auditions and being rejected every other day. The look thing. That you have to lose weight, that you have to do Botox.

I was six years old when I saw my first Godard movie, eight when I first experienced Bergman. I wanted to be a director when I was fourteen.

The condition of being an actress can be unbearable.

I went to film school to make films just because you're in control of the story.

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.

If Woody Allen called me, I'd be there straight away. Who wouldn't? Truly.

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'm an adaptable nomad. I love Paris, I've been living in Los Angeles and New York since 1990. I love London, too. My roots are inside of me.

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.

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.

When you're an actress, you become this thing in people's hands that people are trying to manipulate. I cannot stand it.

I make these little films. I'm just a working person. I just study people a little bit more. It's more sociological, and it's funny anyway - not that serious. It's not like false humility. I just take it for what it is.

I want to be positive and say: everything I've written will get made eventually.

I learned directing by editing because I saw all the mistakes I had made.

Some people are still very romantic! I mean, those funny vampire films are super romantic, and I don't think that's bad. It means there are a lot of people who still believe in love in a weird way. Okay, it's a cheesy way, and I guess if you think about it, you're like, "Wait, you can love them as long as they're dead?" Maybe that's the point. Maybe it's more twisted than I thought. You can love but you can't age.

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.

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'm comfortable wherever I am, and I can be anywhere and feel comfortable after three weeks. I adapt, and I'm like a chameleon. If a country doesn't have Internet, then I get used to not having the Internet. I could basically live anywhere. I'm a nomad at heart. Nothing is more boring than monotony.

Very quickly I realized that directing is a combination of things: It's visual, it's directing the actors, it's telling a story. And people don't always mention this part of directing, but it's also knowing how to really edit something into something that makes sense.

Baby, you are gonna miss that plane.

I think some people, when they get a certain ego, they lose sense of whatever.

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.

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.

Performing is the hardest thing. Even though I've done it for so many years, it's still exposing yourself. You suddenly become extremely vulnerable when you're on camera. You're filmed and you're being observed. It's a bit of a violation each time.