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.
— Charlotte Rampling
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.'
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.
It's sort of fun. If someone's eyeballing you, it makes you feel good.
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.
Usually, watching yourself is pretty awful. People think we all love watching our own films. We don't. We cringe away from it.
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.
I'm very flattered to be called a style icon! But it's simple, my style; it's just men's suits and shoes. That's the basic premise.
I've played the wicked mothers; I've played the serial-killer-type mothers now. They have to have an edge on them. They can't just be everyday moms, because I never thought of myself as an everyday person in cinema - I'm an everyday person in real life, like anyone. But not in what I project out there. I want something more exciting.
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.
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 am actually a very unspeaking person. I'm not really good in social situations. People expect me to be more outgoing. I don't know why. They think I have this kind of assurance.
I think the happiest time of my life was when I was in my late teens. I was a little bit of an it-girl. Making myself seen. And it was a wonderful time to be young.
I did that film just so I could kiss Robert Redford.
You cannot watch yourself dispassionately.
You can never really judge your work because once it's done, it's done.
French women have been made beautiful by the French people - they're very aware of their bodies, the way they move and speak, they're very confident of their sexuality. French society's made them like that.
Painting and photography keep the creative channel open, and for an actor, it's to keep alive, it's to keep awake, it's to keep watching, it's to keep feeling, it's to keep enjoying, to keep that sensuality of feeling alive.
I must explore desert ground and see what can grow. But there are limits. I know in my heart what I would never do.
I haven't got ambitions. Actually, I'm determined not to die until I get very old. I want to be a great-great-great-grandmother.
What I am doing is not acting. I am playing myself.
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.
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.
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.
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.
One mysterious person looking at another mysterious person equals what? Another mystery.
I was very friendly with Jimi Hendrix because my boyfriend at the time, Tommy Weber, was making a film about him, so I would go to all of his shows.
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.
I could have carried on in comedy. But my life was dark.
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.
I am fascinated by the whole process of what it's like to be alive, whether it's unbelievably uncomfortable and horrible or whether it's quite nice.
Doing cinema is not about watching yourself.
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.
If words don't have vibration behind them, and a real feeling behind them, then they're just words.
For an actor, if you're not doing a job, you can't just practice acting. Your instrument is your whole person.
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.
When I see a young girl, I can see why you would be attracted if you were a man. I remember when it was like that for me, too, and it was nice.
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 what we do best, in the artistic world, are the things where we're handicapped.
If you don't have a certain amount of stage fright, then it's not going to be that interesting. It's not going to have the inner vibration. I think screen work needs inner vibration.
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.
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.'
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.
The '60s in London obviously brought about the explosion of music, the 'Beatles' especially, and then the 'Rolling Stones' and other forms of music, and then fashion and photography and films - kitchen-sink dramas we called them at that time, which was our 'nouvelle vague' in Britain, films that talk about real life.
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 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.
I remember my father saying to me once, 'I finally know how to describe you, Charlotte. You're prickly.' And he was right - prickly is a very good description. If I had to be an animal, I'd probably be a porcupine.
I think that most actors don't have very good opinions of themselves.
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.
A film based on a jolly good John Grisham book is fine, but I like to get a bit under the skin.
