Quotes from Emmanuelle Beart

I had my mouth done when I was 27. It was a botched job. Obviously, if I had liked my mouth I wouldn't have had it re-done.

I keep reading that I'm cold. But I'm not, I'm shy. And I play a lot of women of fire and sexuality like an animal - so I'm cold on one side and fiery on the other.

I don't see my old films, but I think of the characters I played as friends, like the women I meet in my life who made strong impressions on me. I remember them and they are part of me.

You may think of me as an object of desire and I'm going to tell you that I can be in front of you naked and not be erotic.

I don't always see my movies right away. And there are some I haven't seen at all. Sometimes that bothers the directors, so I'm obliged to see them.

There are moments when you feel that the desire to work is fading, and the only way to bring it back is to get away from it, to put yourself in a state of frustration so you feel the need again.

I think my best work has been in France with great men. It's been my great fortune to work with really great men - with Olivier Assayas, Raoul Ruiz, Jacques Rivette. I am tutored by them.

I am an actress, I earn money, I am well-known. I don't think it is altruism to become engaged in humanitarian work. It's the least one can do.

There is a phrase in French, which means 'to miss.' To pass by. To not be able to stop. You love someone and someone loves you, but it just can't work for different reasons.

Very often with an American movie, the end is very happy and you just feel good when you go out. When you go to a French movie, it's kind of like, oh!, and you can't go out; you're stuck in your chair. It goes so deeply inside of the heart.

I'm less desperate now to express what's inside me, that's true - I act these days because it keeps me awake and interested, an eternal student.

I stay in France. Better to be the queen of a village than a servant in a kingdom.

We've all had that fear, that despair of losing someone, or this fierce desire because it's not reciprocated. The less reciprocation there is, the more desire we have.