After a long time with someone, you realise you've been thinking for two.

I was very lost as a teenager. Which is a horrible way to feel.

I do consider myself as being French, I suppose.

Exoticism can give you an edge: it makes people assume you're cleverer than you are and gives you the upper hand.

Buy, buy, buy, buy! They want to grab you and trap you and turn you into little Elizabeth Hurleys.

Movies make you immortal and ageless.

Successful films are very dangerous things.

I'm not used to being asked what I want to talk about. That's why I'm an actress. Get told what to do, stand on the mark, say your words, wear this, look this way, look that way.

I know I can be bolshy and really unpleasant, and it always happens if I lose confidence in the people I'm working with. If I've got no confidence in what I'm doing and they don't provide me with some assurance that we're doing the right thing then I bully people. I'm a horrible bully.

I'd love to do some comedy. Particularly French comedy, which I know sounds like a contradiction in terms.

I love shooting French films because I don't have to stick with being sophisticated or stuck-up.

My life is European.

You have to think about whether that Mercedes-Benz you have is actually worth how much it costs to you.

I think in most jobs, you get better as you get older. You gain experience, you gain knowledge.

With the theatre, your whole day is geared towards the evening's show, and that's the job. People usually go to work about 9 and come home around 5, or maybe 7.

We older women in Europe are lucky not to be shoved away in a drawer.

There's something incredibly sexy about sand and sweat and dunes photographed like women's backs.

We all come in different shapes and sizes, and that's fine by me.

It's very hard having a career in different continents and two different languages.

Films are just consumables.

I'm not one of those famous people flying round the world emoting over every catastrophe. I'm too feeble.

The Cannes film festival is about big-budget films but also remarkable films made in different political regimes by film-makers with little resources.

I really like acting in French. It's actually quite different for me, from acting in English. It's fun acting in a foreign language. You're liberated or freed from preconceptions.

Often, the roles I'm offered in England are melancholic women who are filled with regret for the past, regret for their fading beauty.