Isabelle Huppert Quotes

I feel like I express myself, as an actor. Whatever the character is put in front of me, I try to bring truth to it, whichever way it lands. I try to bring as much truth to it and make it as believable as I can. I think that's the job of an actor.

Playing a character is an illusion, and I feel that when you know too much about a person, possibly part of that illusion is disrupted.

That's probably the biggest secret of acting: If the actor believes it themselves, they can make you believe it.

When I play a gay character, I want to be as believable as possible. And when I'm playing a straight character, I also want to be as believable as possible. So the less that people know about my personal life, the more believable I can be as a character.

You never want to just be outrageous for outrageous' sake 'cause then it doesn't work, and it's not believable. You want to be as true to whatever character you're playing.

It is a tough job to portray a character and make it believable on screen.

There are parts that you can do them all your life, and no one knows you're even acting, and there are other parts which somehow - I think they say they 'pop' - people notice that you're in and you become an actor from the movies and people take you in a whole different way. Whether or not I can keep that ball rolling is another matter.

That's the fun thing about making movies is that you get to do stuff. You get to be things, say things that you're not, kind of walk in someone else's shoes and play dress up and make believe. It's pretty cool.

I actually don't smoke weed, but I've played a lot of stoners - especially with Seth Rogen.

When you're acting, everything is there around you, you just have to believe that it's real. When you're standing there with a slightly grey wig on and you have a baby in your arms screaming in your ear, you can go: "Well, I guess this is what it's like!"

I love to act, I've always wanted to be an actor. I think that acting and fiction go nicely together - being able to visualize language as something you perform, not just something that's there on the page.

I really, specifically, love acting, and I think it's a really cool thing to be really indulgent and follow that.

I've had to play characters who I absolutely disagree with, as far as their politics, as far as their religion, and their stance on certain social issues, I completely disagree with them. But I have to go in and find who they are and get to their core, into their truth, and have absolute faith and believe in that, in order to portray it. So you have to walk in a lot of different shoes, in that you can't help but have your mind open as a result of that.

As an actress, I think I really understand that stage where you think you are picking reality in order to feed the fiction, but it happens to be the contrary. It's the fiction that suddenly feeds your reality. And you don't know how it has been done. That's the kind of magical transposition that is art.

I've often thought that it would be great to do some acting because nobody would think that I would be able to do it and it scares the living hell out of me.

In the story, I think as an actor you're just trying to fit into the world.

The most significant piece of advice my father gave me early on about acting was, don't get caught acting. Really believe in what you're doing and then commit to it. Even if it feels uncomfortable, even if you feel that you're gonna look like an ass. It's all acting, but find the truth in a moment as opposed to just pretending you have and rather than trying to act your way out of it.

People tend to think when you're on dramatic films, that it's all so heavy, but it's really not when you're working with great actors.

I think I'm a better comedic actress than I am a dramatic actress, but everybody believes I'm this dramatic actress and I'll take it.

I don't think I could ever stop doing serious movies and just do comedies, or vice versa, but there is something cool about going to work everyday and you're just trying to make your friends laugh. That's nice work if you can get it, you know what I mean? It's different than going to work and knowing that I've gotta slap someone in the face today, and then I've gotta cry, and someone's gonna die, I've gotta get myself to that place.

I believe acting truly is harnessing the power of belief.

I definitely want to do films. To see a character out from beginning to end in a matter of a hundred somewhat pages and then move on to the next role, is fascinating.

I don't really think it matters if you go into stage or TV as long as you do a bit of character work, really.

I love the process of acting, simply because I like to play make believe. But for me, it is purely make believe and it is a process of playing.

Just concentrate on the performers. Make sure you get the performers, and that's it. That's all we need to do." And I was thinking, "Well what if you do both? Of course the performance is important, the writing is really important. But what if you could have the perfect marriage of making it look really slick as well?" I think that's kind of what I tried to develop as a style, and Spaced was the first TV show I did where all the elements came together.