An actor is never so great as when he reminds you of an animal - falling like a cat, lying like a dog, moving like a fox.

Taste is a result of a thousand distastes.

An actor is never so great as when he reminds you of an animal - falling like a cat, lying like a dog, moving like a fox.

The film of tomorrow will be an act of love.

The film of tomorrow will not be directed by civil servants of the camera, but by artists for whom shooting a film constitutes a wonderful and thrilling adventure.

I've always had the impression that real militants are like cleaning women, doing a thankless, daily but necessary job.

When humor can be made to alternate with melancholy, one has a success, but when the same things are funny and melancholic at the same time, it's just wonderful.

In love, women are professionals, men are amateurs.

I have always preferred the reflection of the life to life itself.

Is the cinema more important than life?

Hitchcock loves to be misunderstood, because he has based his whole life around misunderstandings.

Film lovers are sick people.

The film of tomorrow will resemble the person who made it, and the number of spectators will be proportional to the number of friends the director has.

The film of tomorrow appears to me as even more personal than an individual and autobiographical novel, like a confession, or a diary.

At first, I wasn't sure whether I'd be a critic or a filmmaker, but I knew it would be something like that.

During the war, I saw many films that made me fall in love with the cinema.

I had thought of writing, actually, and that later on I'd be a novelist.

I have always preferred the reflect of the life to life itself.

I prefer to be busy all day long, and when you work for someone else, you're not busy enough.

I'd skip school regularly to see movies - even in the morning, in the small Parisian theaters that opened early.

Some day I'll make a film that critics will like. When I have money to waste.

What switched me to films was the flood of American pictures into Paris after the Liberation.

A film is a boat which is always on the point of sinking it always tends to break up as you go along and drag you under with it.

Airing ones dirty linen never makes for a masterpiece.

My favorite actor is Wallace Beery.

I've been a very lucky actor.

I don't think I could be happy as an actor if there was a tyrant on the set.

When I was starting to get noticed as an actor in the 1970s for something other than the third cowboy on the right who ended up dying in every movie or episode, Burt Reynolds was the biggest star in the world.

Most parts that can be played by one actor can equally well be played by another, but not this.

I think, frankly, that I'm a better director than I was an actor.

I knew an actor's career goes up and down and back up again. Your standing in this business can't be your whole identity; otherwise, you're doomed.

I don't think any actor feels comfortable watching themselves in movies. You must be very narcissistic. The problem with your own opinion of yourself is that contrary to the normal spectators, when you watch a film you are in, you only watch yourself.

I don't think there has been any increase in sophistication in the audience. When people are aware of a concept that's easy to understand, and there's an actor who will attract them to the theater and it's a movie that's funny three-quarters of the time, it will be successful.

I never dreamed about being an actor, because that was out of reach. Coming from a small town that was big in farming, and also big in clothing factories, you don't dream about being a professional football player or an actor.

My goal was always to be recognized as a good actor but no one was interested in that, simply because society just wants to warm towards your appearance. This is the great blemish of society.

If you really do want to be an actor who can satisfy himself and his audience, you need to be vulnerable.

To be honest with you, when I got into this I never thought about reviews. I never thought about what people would say about me. I was just a young guy who was excited to become a comedian and an actor and I just wanted to get to do what I got to do.

It was very natural for me to want to disappear into dark theater, I am really very shy. That is something that people never seem to fully grasp because, when you are an actor, you are meant to be an exhibitionist.

I think that I've still not been successful at playing the role of the retired actor, and I'd like to work on that.

And once you cease to be a real person, you stop being a good actor.

When I decided I wanted to be an actor, I said I wanted to work with quality actors and directors.

There are roles I want that my agency might not want me to do because of the subject matter or whatever. Or there are roles that people won't bring to me because they don't think I'll do it. And that is a big strain because an actor wants to act.

Reality is, I'm an actor and an entertainer, and I really wouldn't know what to do with another profession.

I still feel like I'm trying to make it. It's hard to shed the struggling actor thing.

Only a great actor finds the difficulties of the actor's art infinite.

Follow the wisdom of the great actor, James Cagney, you hit your mark, you look the other guy in the eye, and you tell the truth.

I was always a character actor. I just looked like Little Red Riding Hood.

In other words, I wouldn't like to be an actor if I could only be real. I like to get wild, behaviorally wild, and it's crazy to think of any form where it's just one way.

An actor entering through the door, you've got nothing. But if he enters through the window, you've got a situation.