Vincent Cassel Quotes

The relationship I have to everyday life is very European. We have a different relationship with religion, with faith, with nudity, with sex, with food.

I grew up watching ‘Raging Bull.’

I think people have a misinterpretation of Method acting, because Method acting is a wonderful thing. The thing is, if you take it too seriously, it’s like religion. You start to think it’s the truth. But it’s not the truth. It’s just a way to get somewhere.

I ran away from three different boarding schools before joining a circus school, and eventually I became an actor. The only thing I learned at boarding school was never to send my child to one.

People look up to Jacques Mesrine as if he were a Robin Hood, stealing from the rich, but he never gave anything back to anybody.

I always compare human beings to animals. It’s a nice way to figure out who they are.

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.

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’m more attracted to the bad guys. Why? Because in real life, I don’t know any good guys. I know okay guys. I know polite guys. I know people who can control themselves.

To work with somebody you love makes filming faster, more fun.

The day after I had my licence to drive, I made Paris/Nice at 230 km/hour.

I wear a lot of wigs as Jacques Mesrine. He’d wear multiple wigs and take them off one at a time to rob three banks in one hour.

I used to be more self-conscious about style because when you’re younger, you want to exist, you want to show everything you do.

When you appear on the screen, often enough you become sexy, even if you look like an elephant.

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

I have learned that acting is not about beauty.

I still wear my trousers baggy as I did in my teens. But in a different way. I’ve loved trainers since my youth – limited edition, vintage, whatever. You could recognise people and judge their character through their trainers. I’m a Nike man.

I think American audiences like gangster movies. You know, it’s part of the culture.

French people are never happy with what they have. They’re always complaining. They’re happy when they’re complaining.

I think I’m actually more vulnerable than people imagine.

I always had the sense of being in the spotlight, being on stage, being looked at.

I worked with young directors all my life, only young directors.

Every movie, especially when you get involved… takes something out of you. You learn something, but you give something to the movie. And after the movie, if the experience has been intense and a true experience, you’re a little different afterward.

There is this idea that it’s very different from the French point of view to work in America blah, blah, blah. But I think it’s different from one person to the other, not from one country to the other.

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

My father is best known for his light comedies, and I’m best known for crazy bad guys with short tempers.

I don’t really shop any more. I only do it when I have to. I think it is very overrated.

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 was thinking of going to London drama schools or to New York, because France didn’t accommodate the things I wanted to do in film.

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.

All good actors are actresses. The more like a woman they are, the better they act, because a man’s salvation is his femininity. Women have stronger sensibilities than men, which allows them to go a bit deeper when they are on and off the stage.

My character in ‘La Haine,’ he’s not bad; he’s unhappy, and usually, people are like that. Most of us are angry.

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.

If most women are looking for security, I think men look for adventure.

The first important movie that I did, I shaved my head for the movie. When the hair grew back, I had white hair for the first time in my life.

The minute I started being recognised, I became much more discreet.

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.

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.

Acting is such a feminine process: you have to become the desire of others. I’m OK with this, and so is Gerard Depardieu. In many ways, he’s very feminine.

I was much more interested by clothes when I was younger. I’m about being discreet. What they call the French touch, whatever that means. Low profile and somehow elegant without being flashy.

Many times, I have heard people saying that they don’t like to work with their wife or husband, but to me, it is a plus. To work with somebody you love makes filming faster, more fun.

Hollywood, for me, is the studios. It’s a way to produce. It’s a different way to make movies, and I never took part in that.

I was a dancer, and my father was a dancer, so I really grew up in that environment.

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

Instead of playing heroes and righteous people, I’d rather portray characters with problems of conscience who have to lie, to betray, and then have to cope with that. They feel more true to me.