Top 35 Charlotte Rampling Quotes

I know I have great inner strength; I always have. I can blank things out, cut people out, and I know that I can go and live in a cave on my own if necessary.

It’s sort of fun. If someone’s eyeballing you, it makes you feel good.

Doing cinema is not about watching yourself.

I don’t want to play everything. So I’ll seek out roles that I’ll say, ‘This is edgy. This is fun. This is wicked. This suits me.’

One mysterious person looking at another mysterious person equals what? Another mystery.

I’d had a French education for three years, my father being in the army. From 9 to 12, I went to French school. I’ve been sort of part of the culture, part of the geography, since I was quite young – the imprint was there.

A lot of young actors will do a scene and then run off and look at themselves. I don’t believe in that at all.

I’m not very good at talking and being with people and being gregarious and outgoing. I love people, but I have great difficulty doing it.

When a subject pops into a director’s head, you either fit in there somewhere, or you don’t. An actor is only who he is. Especially as you get older, there’s not as much of a range of potentially feasible parts.

I must explore desert ground and see what can grow. But there are limits. I know in my heart what I would never do.

If you want to paint the inner life, you paint it from the exterior. From the exterior, you breathe the inner life into your painting.

If you were to find all the people I’ve worked with and ask them what they think of me, they’re all just going to say, ‘Oh, wonderful’, and it’ll just be a lot of blah.

Go out there and try on everything – short skirts, long skirts, mid length, little jackets, men’s clothing – and really look at yourself; really walk around in the clothes. Don’t just take someone else’s advice. You must feel you in these clothes and feel what it’s like to live in them.

I did that film just so I could kiss Robert Redford.

You decide to give your trust over to somebody. And if you don’t decide to, then for me, it’s really not worth going into collective enterprises; you should just work alone.

Training is fabulous because it gives you a basis, a strong structure, so that when you’re unbelievably nervous and you think that you can’t get a word out, you will get the word out.

European films were what it was about for me – the sensations I needed, the depth, the storytelling, the characters, the directors, and the freedom that you can’t really find in American films.

My mother’s incredible diaries, which she’d written from when she was 21, and even before that. She fell in love with my father when she was 12.

I started writing diaries, and mine were horrible. Oh, the monotony. Oh, the angst. I said, ‘I don’t want anyone to find these!’ I destroyed them.

Ever since I was a small child, I’ve had this feeling – it’s in my nature, and so it’s not even pretentious – that if everyone’s going one way, I will go the other, just by some kind of spirit of defiance.

My style very much leans towards the masculine, but I think I am feminine in it – I like the feminine body in masculine shapes. The androgynous look suits me.

We must be very careful when we say that somebody giving you compliments about your looks should be offensive. I think women really should look at why they’re being offended by that.

I think that most actors don’t have very good opinions of themselves.

To grieve is something extremely difficult, we don’t even know how to begin to grieve, and I don’t know how you can be taught to grieve.

I could have been a superstar in America – I was certainly taken out there. But I said, ‘No way, Jose, I’m not staying here in this madhouse.’

Quite often in life, when a tragic event arrives it becomes a springboard for mirroring all other things in one’s life that one hasn’t come to terms with.

Fashion is not trivial. It’s a huge industry and a big part of our lives. Fashion is about us – how we look and present ourselves, how we can change ourselves, and our perceptions. You can dress up to be quite glorious creatures – it’s all a very important part of life.

The process of filmmaking is very musical, you get into the rhythm and the rhythmics of how someone is, especially with Woody Allen who is very much into body language and body movement.

Usually, watching yourself is pretty awful. People think we all love watching our own films. We don’t. We cringe away from it.

I felt very special in Paris, more special than I felt in London. I love London for different reasons. I’ve always been close to London, being English. But somehow, there’s something special about living as an Englishwoman in Paris.

I could have carried on in comedy. But my life was dark.

You cannot watch yourself dispassionately.

I was incredibly fatalistic. I just thought, ‘If it works, it works.’ But I’ve always been like that. I’ve never been easily impressed, and I’ve never thought I didn’t deserve something. If I got it, then I deserved it.

When people want to see your film, you’re over the moon because you’ve actually made real contact. That’s something very special.

I think the reason I have secrets is because there are a lot of things I haven’t been able to let out, and I’m able to let them out through the screen and this medium.