I love Cartier. They are the classic French jeweller.
— Vincent Cassel
Acting is such a feminine process: you have to become the desire of others. I'm OK with this, and so is Gerard Depardieu. In many ways, he's very feminine.
The relationship I have to everyday life is very European. We have a different relationship with religion, with faith, with nudity, with sex, with food.
I spent a whole year in New York without going back to France. And I always came back because my mother was living in New York since I was 13. So I went to summer camps, hang out at the Roxy, go to class for ballet, so I always had part of my life in New York.
What I think I'm perceived as in France is, like, I'm this leading man always doing strange movies because most of the movies I did, like 'Irreversible' or 'Brotherhood of the Wolf' and a bunch of others, and even in France, they always come out as a particular movie, not like the typical French kind of movies that people know most of the time.
French men can be very tough too, you know... Real bad boys move in silence, as we know, so you don't have to be loud and muscular to be scary, actually.
Female influence came from my grandmother and my aunt. They would sing Corsican love songs while cleaning the house and dress all in black and say melodramatic things like: 'I want to die.'
When you appear on the screen, often enough you become sexy, even if you look like an elephant.
The few times in my life where I had four or five movies in a row, it was a nightmare. I felt trapped. I felt like my life was planned for a year and a half or two years, and it was terrible. Most of the time, everything collapsed.
Soderbergh is a very respectable director that manages to have an incredible amount of freedom in a system that doesn't allow anybody to be free as he is on a set. And he will jump from 'Solaris' to 'Ocean's Twelve' and 'Thirteen.'
I'm actually beginning to believe that there is something in common among all of my characters. I'm not sure what it is exactly. But I guess that something is me.
As an actor, I think you should always disappear a little. I act in order to lose myself.
I spent a lot of time in boarding school. This is something I will never do to my kids. I think if you're having kids, then you have to take care of them; otherwise, what's the point? There are many things that parents say are good for the kids, but the truth is they say that because it is good for the parents.
My father danced a lot. He was called 'the French Fred Astaire.'
The first important movie that I did, I shaved my head for the movie. When the hair grew back, I had white hair for the first time in my life.
From my point of view, I'm a totally normal person! Really! I have a family. I have kids. I have a house... I don't have a dog.
My character in 'La Haine,' he's not bad; he's unhappy, and usually, people are like that. Most of us are angry.
I still wear my trousers baggy as I did in my teens. But in a different way. I've loved trainers since my youth - limited edition, vintage, whatever. You could recognise people and judge their character through their trainers. I'm a Nike man.
French people are never happy with what they have. They're always complaining. They're happy when they're complaining.
Actually, I never work in movies for money. I'm glad when I get well-paid, but it's not always the case - trust me.
I'm really proud of 'Oceans 12.' Of course, you do an 'Oceans' movie, you get known all over the world. It's an incredibly powerful medium: It's a Hollywood-identified blockbuster.
I have a physical background. It's not like I'm a kung fu master, but my real training was dance school, and through that, I move to this thing called Capruera that I used in 'Ocean's 12.' I can pretend that I can do a lot of things, but then, I don't really master anything.
I have a tendency to think that when you portray baddies in movies, they come out more human than good guys.
I think American audiences like gangster movies. You know, it's part of the culture.
I feel to look for perfection is a very dangerous path. More than that, it's dangerous because it doesn't exist. You can aim for it, but you already know you won't get there because it doesn't exist. Plus, I definitely think the flaws, little cracks, and accidents are a lot more interesting.
Hollywood, for me, is the studios. It's a way to produce. It's a different way to make movies, and I never took part in that.
What came out of 'Ocean's Twelve' is actually great because you do one 'Ocean's Twelve,' and you're more known around the world than if you did 20 years in the French cinema industry.
Since I was a child, I have had this feeling that the most important work I'd do would be with my family.
I guess I look strange a bit. Strange but confident. I'm not like a model or anything. I always compare this to wearing a hat. You can wear the strangest hat, but if you think it's cool, then you'll look cool.
I was much more interested by clothes when I was younger. I'm about being discreet. What they call the French touch, whatever that means. Low profile and somehow elegant without being flashy.
My problem is I can't show any of my movies to my daughters. It's tough. 'Beauty and the Beast'... they liked it. But that's the only one, really. Otherwise, they've always been dark or violent.
Every movie, especially when you get involved... takes something out of you. You learn something, but you give something to the movie. And after the movie, if the experience has been intense and a true experience, you're a little different afterward.
I know that what I see in every religious person is not something I want to teach my kids.
People pretend to be nice; people pretend to be smooth and polite and everything, but this is only an appearance because the way we're built as human beings is only in paradox and contradictions.
'Brotherhood of the Wolf' is a very important movie because it represents something new. The director Christophe Gans came up with the idea of taking a French legend and making it some kind of really strange, almost Chinese action movie. The result is something that I haven't seen anywhere before.
Instead of playing heroes and righteous people, I'd rather portray characters with problems of conscience who have to lie, to betray, and then have to cope with that. They feel more true to me.
As a younger actor, I had delusions. I would dream of Scorsese and De Niro; I would meet people, and it would be like this, and it would change moviemaking in France, and Paris would become the center of the world.
If I have to pretend to be anything else than French, then I know it's work for me. It's not that it scares me, but it's work. I cannot just pop up on the set and say 'Okay, today I'm Italian!'
I think it's much harder to have a long dialogue scene than an action scene. An action scene is long, but it's not really hard. It's kind of boring, really. It looks good at the end, but to shoot it, it's not the most exciting thing.
All good actors are actresses. The more like a woman they are, the better they act, because a man's salvation is his femininity. Women have stronger sensibilities than men, which allows them to go a bit deeper when they are on and off the stage.
I always compare human beings to animals. It's a nice way to figure out who they are.
I love to act. And between action and cuts, when you work for somebody great, it's wonderful, and I still love it. The moment where you create, that instant is still magic to me. But, all the rest, I get bored with it - all the waiting, and the fact that you have to make appearances, that you have to share your life.
I think people have a misinterpretation of Method acting, because Method acting is a wonderful thing. The thing is, if you take it too seriously, it's like religion. You start to think it's the truth. But it's not the truth. It's just a way to get somewhere.
I trained as a dancer when I was much younger, for a large amount of time, like 6 or 7 years. Not to be a ballet dancer, actually, but I thought it was a complement for an actor. I thought that actors should know how to move, should know how to juggle, should know how to do acrobatics.
Many times, I have heard people saying that they don't like to work with their wife or husband, but to me, it is a plus. To work with somebody you love makes filming faster, more fun.
I'm moving to Rio permanently with my family. It's one of the places left in the world where people still live with a big charge of poetry on a daily basis. I feel we've kind of lost that here in Europe.
In Italy, it is difficult to see a film in the original language because the voice actors here are a mafia.
I work everywhere. If there is a nice adventure in South Korea, for example, why not? Russia, Brazil, whatever. I'm ready for almost anything.
I was a dancer, and my father was a dancer, so I really grew up in that environment.
If most women are looking for security, I think men look for adventure.
