Quotes from Vincent Cassel

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.

It's always interesting to see a director trying different things, and on top of it, doing it right each and almost every time.

The minute your parents die, you stop fighting them. I realized the more I changed my face for films, the more I looked like him. I always liked to disguise myself because I was trying to run away from his image. But all that is not worth it.

I know that what I see in every religious person is not something I want to teach my kids.

I don't think France is a racist country, I really don't, but we do still have many problems with our immigrant past, and there's a shame that goes with that, that works both ways, in the host and in the post-immigrant generation.

Since I was a child, I have had this feeling that the most important work I'd do would be with my family.

I love French style from the Thirties and Forties. French movie stars like Jean Gabin and Yves Montand had so much natural, effortless style.

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.

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 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.

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.

And now I have a big house, nice clothes and I travel in first class and I love it, so maybe it's time to enjoy being a star.

In Italy, it is difficult to see a film in the original language because the voice actors here are a mafia.

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.

Cinema is entertainment, and people go to the movies because they want to feel good and forget about everything.

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.

I feel like the so-called bad guys are never totally bad. I guess it's the closest thing I can do to reality: people act nice but nobody really is nice. We all have to balance that with something dark.

I didn't have many girlfriends in my youth. I was an active young man, jumping from one girl to the next, but never with anyone for more than three or four months.

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.

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.

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 producing more, but I think to direct, one has to have a burning desire, and that's not me. I'd rather do something else.

People ask me where I live most of the time, and it's kind of complicated for me to answer, because I'm not really sure. It's somewhere in between London, Rome, Paris, and Rio.

Working with David Cronenberg or Darren Aronofsky or even Steven Soderbergh isn't really like a typical Hollywood movie. These are true artists, and have a certain amount of freedom when they work, and they're more like independent filmmakers making their way through big studios.