Quotes

I drink too much. Will you tell me one great actor who doesn't drink?

[to Nick Nolte, when the two were discussing how badly their film, Les Grands Fonds (1977), was going] It's a treasure picture, Nick, it's a treasure picture.

What I try to achieve in acting--flamboyance--would be self-indulgence if I tried it as a writer.

Writing is where the real center of my integrity lies. I never write for money. I only act for money, but not invariably, of course. I would never write certain sentences that I say in films, or even that I write in films, because I often fix up my lines.

[in March 1978] Being 50 years old and having ten children . . . the youngest is 13 months . . . creates the economic necessity that forces me into all those big-budget movies in which I often don't have a single realistic line.

Acting is instant enjoyment and childlike. As an actor, Lord God, I can take an audience in a theatre and throw them in any direction. I can't do that as a writer. Writing is painful, it's lonely and you suffer and there's no immediate feedback.

I still don't think of myself as a star. Success lasts only three seconds. After that you're the same as you were before you had it. I'm not a true artist anyway because I refuse to shrug off my family. To support them I must work in commercial films. My taxes alone keep eight lawyers busy, and when I finally get my money, it's only one-third of what I earn. With the kids in school and my other responsibilities, I get no change back from the first million dollars. The money flows out like water.

[in 1977] I'm the happiest I've been in a long time. I have my new marriage. I have my new baby, my tenth child. I don't have to work in third-rate movies anymore, and I'm in great physical shape.

[on working underground in the subway tunnels for Les Pirates du métro (1974)] I found myself in "Dante's Inferno". It was the middle of winter and the freezing weather and dirty conditions took its toll on my mental and physical state.