Lea Seydoux Quotes

In climbing, sponsors typically support an athlete but provide very little direction, giving the climber free rein to follow his or her passion toward whatever is inspiring. It's a wonderful freedom, in many ways similar to that of an artist who simply lives his life and creates whatever moves him.

I always wanted to be a doctor and go to art school, but I thought I'd regret it if I didn't act.

There was nobody telling me, 'You should be an artist,' or, 'You should be an actor.'

I was anxious before I decided to go back to acting about what I wanted to do with my life. Once I realized I was sort of interested in acting, I've been pretty lucky and had all these great parts. And I feel pretty much like, 'What will happen will happen.'

As a kid, I wanted to be an actress, but ambition and reality are two different things.

I enjoyed living in Chicago and doing plays for little or no money. I never actually thought that I would leave Chicago, originally. I wasn't one of those people that had a plan to pack up the van and drive out to Hollywood. I didn't want to.

After five awful movies, I admitted failure and said I was not cut out to be an actor. But how many people get a chance to live their dream?

I started studying at 26. Before that, I never thought of acting as something that I would ever try.

I don't set goals. Like, that's what I want to be doing however many years from now. I do what I love to do at the moment. If I wake up tomorrow and decide I want to dance, that's what I'd do. Or design clothes.

You gotta make the movie you want to make.

It's important to me to try and expose young people to the things they believe are off-limits to them. I tell them, 'There are no walls, only the ones we put up.' My advice to young people looking at my life is not to follow my footprint but to go out there and make their own.

As an actor, you know, I love not being pigeonholed, which is great. No one really knows who I am. So that's a positive.

When I did make the decision to focus on acting, I think my mother was just relieved for me that I had finally started to focus.

I'm going to try to not let anyone put me in a box, and that certainly applies to the things I do outside of acting.

Some big actresses told me a few things that inspired me. One said that the biggest challenge for a female actress was to make sure they are not profoundly bored. Another told me to just do whatever you want - do anything.

I don't regret giving up football for acting. I love football and am very proud I played for Morton. But the truth is, I wasn't going to get much higher in football. At the same time, I sensed I could go somewhere in acting. I'm 28, which is young for acting, whereas in football I'd now be near the end of my career.

To me, the American Dream is being able to follow your own personal calling. To be able to do what you want to do is incredible freedom.

I think my guideline has been to find things that inspire me. And as long as I stick to that, I don't think I'll have any problems crossing over to becoming an adult actress.

I want children, but at the moment the liberty I have now finally, has a far too high value.

I think my parents love that I want to do something a little different than what they do.

Well, I made an announcement to my family at 8 that I wanted to be an actor, and I focused like a laser beam on it. I never had a fallback plan.

I thought I could never be the actor Dad was, so I avoided it for a while.

Where I came from, the idea of going into show business was just ridiculous; in fact I didn't tell anybody because I knew people would laugh at me. So I sort of snuck around and got some pictures and got a resume together and, of course, lied and said I did all kinds of things I didn't do.

I was watching TV at age 9 or 10, and my mom said that I came from the front room and I told her that I want to act. And she said if you want to do this at 18, then you can. It was a very simple story, yet, I do not even remember the conversation that I had with my mother. Until she reminded me of the story many years later.

I would hate to be 65 and think, 'What if I had tried to be an actor?'