Quotes from Juliette Binoche

My outlook on life is to be true. To take risks. To love the shadows as well as the light. To find your task. To recognise your task. To be active.

Before I thought there was a common denominator between my films - as if all my characters were sisters - but I'm not so sure now.

It's not a struggle to be on a diet. You feel lighter, and your spirit is lighter, too. But I love chocolate, and I allow myself to have chocolate. That doesn't go against a diet for me.

I think it's the same simple thing for everyone - to be happy, and have love in your life.

Movies are open doors, and at every door, I change character and life.

But I think it's a little different in Europe, because 40 is really the best age for a woman. That's when we hit our peak and become this ripe fruit.

Choosing to be in the theatre was a way to put my roots down somewhere with other people. It was a way to choose a new family.

For me, habit is just a synonym for death.

It's never been my purpose to become an American icon, or more famous or richer.

Being a famous actress may give you a sense of being important, but believe me, it's just an illusion.

I've never thought of my characters as being sad. On the contrary, they are full of life. They didn't choose tragedy. Tragedy chose them.

I believe that being an actress or being involved in a movie has to be a life experience, otherwise why go for it? I have to change me, and I have to learn things, and I have to push me and my limits. By acting, I find a freedom inside of a prison in a way.

I like travelling and if I have to come to Hollywood to make a movie I will, but otherwise I'd never move there. It's very much an industry town and that doesn't really interest me.

In a building with apartments, of course, you want to make connections. Life is easier that way. There's salt if you don't have salt; you can knock at someone's door, like in any city. But you know, you can hear the others, and you want to sleep, you get annoyed.

I've played journalists before, and I have good friends who are journalists. I think being an actor is not very far from being a journalist. Because you investigate, you try to understand, you're asking questions, you're interested in the other.

As an actor, I have to be fulfilled in the roles that I play; it has to be a journey for me to learn something or involve myself.

People think actors have such glamorous lives, but the truth is actors go where nobody wants to go.

If you have everything, then you don't want to go on. It's the lacking that makes you search for something better.

I want to make films that are political and social. Films with a message or an idea. Films that dare to ask.

Each new film is like a trial. Before I step in front of the camera, I do not know whether I am going to fall or whether I am going to fly - and that is exactly the way I want it to stay.

As actors, we are so privileged to do what we do and to give to the world and to choose the subject we want to say to the world.

I really don't think that the Oscar changed my career much because I didn't want it to.

But, you know, when I choose a film I need to believe in it and believe I can do something special with it, and after a while that means not trying to judge or analyze why I should do it. You have to follow this intuition thing, which is a mystery to me.

Attraction is beyond our will or ideas sometimes.