Top 25 Emmanuelle Beart Quotes

Often, when you see yourself on the screen, you feel like a sweater that’s been put through the washing machine. You have the impression of having done something full and luminous, and suddenly, when you see it on the screen, it’s turned back into a tiny little thing.

I don’t always see my movies right away. And there are some I haven’t seen at all. Sometimes that bothers the directors, so I’m obliged to see them.

Beauty is not something you can count on. Usually, when people say you are beautiful, it is when there is a harmony between the inside and the outside.

I wouldn’t say I was a rebel as such, but I certainly wasn’t right at school.

I keep reading that I’m cold. But I’m not, I’m shy. And I play a lot of women of fire and sexuality like an animal – so I’m cold on one side and fiery on the other.

When you are happy and in love and when you have children, then maybe you are beautiful.

When I’m playing a part, I can feel all my body playing it; it’s like really making love.

After 10 years of French torture – psychological torture – it’s great to do an American movie.

I had my mouth done when I was 27. It was a botched job. Obviously, if I had liked my mouth I wouldn’t have had it re-done.

The body is an actor’s tool, like the face, malleable. I never thought that being naked was immoral or outrageous.

I can’t just react on the strength of an email and three pages of synopsis, and say I’m going to take off for three months of my life.

I was a very bad student. I didn’t know what I wanted to do, but I knew I didn’t want to go farther in school. I hated school and was always the bad one; I was always insulting the teachers.

If a man or woman has something redone it is because he or she can no longer live with that part of their body, it is no longer bearable. Either they get help and find the strength to fight or they proceed with the act.

We’ve all had that fear, that despair of losing someone, or this fierce desire because it’s not reciprocated. The less reciprocation there is, the more desire we have.

I have never had so much fun as in Montreal. I taught the kids French, I baby-sat, I went to school, I was a receptionist at a hairdresser’s, I danced and drank all night. I found that the more you do, the more you have time to do… it’s weird, non?

I’m less desperate now to express what’s inside me, that’s true – I act these days because it keeps me awake and interested, an eternal student.

Once I opened my eyes to the realities of life, I couldn’t close them.

I played football when I was little. I didn’t want to be an actress at all, I wanted to be a majorette in an Australian circus. That was my ambition.

My looks haven’t prevented me from playing prostitutes or people broken by life. But when they need a token blonde with big breasts, that’s OK, too. It’s part of the game.

You may think of me as an object of desire and I’m going to tell you that I can be in front of you naked and not be erotic.

I dream about singing. I would love to sing and write.

I think my best work has been in France with great men. It’s been my great fortune to work with really great men – with Olivier Assayas, Raoul Ruiz, Jacques Rivette. I am tutored by them.

My parents sent me to Montreal because I kept getting kicked out of school in France.

If I have one thing perfect, it’s my eyebrows. And my feet. I love my feet. They’re like Japanese feet. The rest I would like to hide. Especially my freckles. I feel ridiculous.

There are moments when you feel that the desire to work is fading, and the only way to bring it back is to get away from it, to put yourself in a state of frustration so you feel the need again.