I took the test for AIDS. I began to hate people who were not sick. Those people are monsters, I would think, believing that they are well because of moral superiority, because they are good. I identified with the loneliness of the sick. I felt that there was something pure about them.
— Isabelle Adjani
For me to get up and feel the urge to go to the set and all that, I have to feel there is something tremendously vibrating to achieve there. I need to lose sometimes a consciousness of the person and the reality in order to be happy to come back into the reality and happier to live it for this cause, to be an artist in this life.
Algeria keeps me awake at night. What about you?
If you are in a gym class with other women, and even if you are in shape, you feel like, 'Do they think my legs are not right?' Since you are supposed to be the perfect one, they look for the defects. It's such an embarrassment.
Journalists are still inventing things that never existed about me. Before, it made me cry, but now I laugh about it.
I'm a public figure. It's up to me to take the initiative to explain things. It's my responsibility.
I'm a very secretive person. That's how I grew up. My father was very secretive.
Passion is very destructive.
It's funny how people fantasise about your life sometimes. But it's so much quieter than they think.
I like films that rest in the memory, so I try and choose parts which have some kind of social or emotional force.
I am a follower of hyaluronic acid - always in small doses, of course - to fill wrinkles and fine lines.
I talked about the persecution of Algerians and told about racism in my childhood. And it was as if, after that, I wasn't French anymore.
You must take the risk to disclose yourself in order to become more real, more human. And even if the price is high.
I'm in an agreeable state: busy, enthusiastic, curious.
I have no fear of being less beautiful, I've always been afraid of not being beautiful.
One can not love without opening oneself, and opening oneself, that's taking the risk of suffering. One does not have control.
But no one frees himself from being in love in three days.
You have to believe yourself to be the centre of the world, or you believe nothing. You start to treat yourself very badly.
I like working emotions that can take you beyond your life. And yet you have to resist them in order remain within your life. Otherwise, you're burned. I like that fight. It's more of a fight with yourself.
I have a lot of friends in Paris, and I love to get away from home.
Someone who is an artist can say, 'I can create and can make what I create disappear.'
I find the heated political debate over the burkini both ridiculous and dangerous.
American hypocrisy consists of thinking that everything is serious; French hypocrisy is to think that nothing is serious.
I like to go see films that give me courage and hope.
The soul preserves beauty.
I take risks, but I don't lose respect for my real self. Because what's going to happen afterwards? How are you going to get back? Is there going to be a train, or will it be after midnight and you can't go home again?
If I don't work very often, it's because what I read is written for formidable actresses, but actresses who make a habit of playing with their cup half full.
I think we have to get back the value of behavior that is consistent with being taught: that's to say, respecting teachers, listening, and not always expecting your opinion to take precedence.
The newspapers were saying, 'You have AIDS.' They actually said I was dead. I just threw myself into my work when the whispering campaign turned really ugly.
I've learned that to expose yourself, to reveal yourself is a test of your humanness.
There has also been much love, joy, evidence of admiration, there has never been one without the other.
You protect your being when you love yourself better. That's the secret.
Passion surprises. One doesn't search it. It can happen to you tomorrow.
In love, one should simplify, choose persons worthy of their promises and leave them if they don't keep them.
It's exhilarating to read something that tells you that people saw something and felt something that you thought was so discreet. When they relate you to some of their own fantasies of who or how some actresses should be in movies. That's really kind of sweet!
When you hold a baby in your arms, you don't want to put it in a basket right away. You want to keep the baby close.
I loved my freedom as an adolescent, and I'd love to be an adolescent again.
If my life hadn't itself been a modern adaptation of 'Les Atrides,' I probably would never have left the theatre.
We can't forbid women from going to the beach because of a costume, even if it is rightly seen as neo-fundamentalist, backward, and shocking.
Simply, the majority of the most interesting filmmakers are the ones confronted with difficult situations. Their creativity blows a hole in the wall and lets in the light.
It doesn't need to be that violent and crazy and wild. Having experienced it, you don't belong to yourself anymore. You belong to the passion... It's something you have to go through to learn what passion is about.
People tell me I'm doing all these intense women and that I should lighten up. Then I do a comedy that I'm not happy with, and I think, 'Let's go back to heavy, heart-breaking drama; it's so much more fun.'
For me, being an actress is not just a profession but a profession of faith.
I've never felt like a French actress.
I went on French television for 20 minutes. It was very embarrassing to have to say, 'I'm not dead. I'm well. I'm not ill, and I don't have AIDS.' I hated doing it, because it was so insulting to those who really did have AIDS.
Today I trust my instinct, I trust myself. Finally.
I've suffered too much to hide my feelings.
I don't think of it at the moment, but the roles that interest me are those of young people.
My limits will be better marked. Both the limits I will set, and my own limits.
I believe that when you work on yourself, you are attracted by different, more positive beings.
