Charlotte Rampling

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. ”

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

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. ”

For an actor, if you're not doing a job, you can't just practice acting. Your instrument is your whole person. ”

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'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. ”

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 '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. ”

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