CHARLOTTE RAMPLING

I was incredibly fatalistic. I just thought, 'If it works, it works.' But I've always been like that. I've never been easily impressed, and I've never thought I didn't deserve something. If I got it, then I deserved it.

I'd had a French education for three years, my father being in the army. From 9 to 12, I went to French school. I've been sort of part of the culture, part of the geography, since I was quite young - the imprint was there.

If you want to paint the inner life, you paint it from the exterior. From the exterior, you breathe the inner life into your painting.

When people want to see your film, you're over the moon because you've actually made real contact. That's something very special.

I think what we do best, in the artistic world, are the things where we're handicapped.

When I see a young girl, I can see why you would be attracted if you were a man. I remember when it was like that for me, too, and it was nice.

My mother's incredible diaries, which she'd written from when she was 21, and even before that. She fell in love with my father when she was 12.

French women have been made beautiful by the French people - they're very aware of their bodies, the way they move and speak, they're very confident of their sexuality. French society's made them like that.

I think that most actors don't have very good opinions of themselves.

Quite often in life, when a tragic event arrives it becomes a springboard for mirroring all other things in one's life that one hasn't come to terms with.

A lot of young actors will do a scene and then run off and look at themselves. I don't believe in that at all.

When a subject pops into a director's head, you either fit in there somewhere, or you don't. An actor is only who he is. Especially as you get older, there's not as much of a range of potentially feasible parts.

I was very friendly with Jimi Hendrix because my boyfriend at the time, Tommy Weber, was making a film about him, so I would go to all of his shows.

The '60s in London obviously brought about the explosion of music, the 'Beatles' especially, and then the 'Rolling Stones' and other forms of music, and then fashion and photography and films - kitchen-sink dramas we called them at that time, which was our 'nouvelle vague' in Britain, films that talk about real life.

To grieve is something extremely difficult, we don't even know how to begin to grieve, and I don't know how you can be taught to grieve.

One of the reasons I don't see eye to eye with Women's Lib is that women have it all on a plate if only they knew it. They don't have to be pretty either.

Usually, watching yourself is pretty awful. People think we all love watching our own films. We don't. We cringe away from it.

My style very much leans towards the masculine, but I think I am feminine in it - I like the feminine body in masculine shapes. The androgynous look suits me.

I know I have great inner strength; I always have. I can blank things out, cut people out, and I know that I can go and live in a cave on my own if necessary.

Go out there and try on everything - short skirts, long skirts, mid length, little jackets, men's clothing - and really look at yourself; really walk around in the clothes. Don't just take someone else's advice. You must feel you in these clothes and feel what it's like to live in them.

I'm very flattered to be called a style icon! But it's simple, my style; it's just men's suits and shoes. That's the basic premise.

You decide to give your trust over to somebody. And if you don't decide to, then for me, it's really not worth going into collective enterprises; you should just work alone.

I don't want to play everything. So I'll seek out roles that I'll say, 'This is edgy. This is fun. This is wicked. This suits me.'

If words don't have vibration behind them, and a real feeling behind them, then they're just words.

I think the happiest time of my life was when I was in my late teens. I was a little bit of an it-girl. Making myself seen. And it was a wonderful time to be young.