Actor

I always compare human beings to animals. It's a nice way to figure out who they are.

I always compare human beings to animals. It's a nice way to figure out who they are.

I did direct two short movies. I learned many things, and one of the things I learned was that I am not a director. It has to be visceral, and it's not for me. I feel much more comfortable acting.

When you appear on the screen, often enough you become sexy, even if you look like an elephant.

I'm more attracted to the bad guys. Why? Because in real life, I don't know any good guys. I know okay guys. I know polite guys. I know people who can control themselves.

What I think I'm perceived as in France is, like, I'm this leading man always doing strange movies because most of the movies I did, like 'Irreversible' or 'Brotherhood of the Wolf' and a bunch of others, and even in France, they always come out as a particular movie, not like the typical French kind of movies that people know most of the time.

When eventually I started to act a bit more, I realised that circus school had taught me something that a lot of actors my age didn't have: physicality. They didn't know how to move. Acting is not all about talking. There is something animalistic about it.

I didn't have many girlfriends in my youth. I was an active young man, jumping from one girl to the next, but never with anyone for more than three or four months.

I spent a whole year in New York without going back to France. And I always came back because my mother was living in New York since I was 13. So I went to summer camps, hang out at the Roxy, go to class for ballet, so I always had part of my life in New York.

I was much more interested by clothes when I was younger. I'm about being discreet. What they call the French touch, whatever that means. Low profile and somehow elegant without being flashy.

When you see violence in movies in general, it's very quick and painless, which isn't what it's like.

The first important movie that I did, I shaved my head for the movie. When the hair grew back, I had white hair for the first time in my life.

My father is best known for his light comedies, and I'm best known for crazy bad guys with short tempers.

Soderbergh is a very respectable director that manages to have an incredible amount of freedom in a system that doesn't allow anybody to be free as he is on a set. And he will jump from 'Solaris' to 'Ocean's Twelve' and 'Thirteen.'

I think I'm actually more vulnerable than people imagine.

In Italy, it is difficult to see a film in the original language because the voice actors here are a mafia.

The relationship I have to everyday life is very European. We have a different relationship with religion, with faith, with nudity, with sex, with food.

I still wear my trousers baggy as I did in my teens. But in a different way. I've loved trainers since my youth - limited edition, vintage, whatever. You could recognise people and judge their character through their trainers. I'm a Nike man.

I'm moving to Rio permanently with my family. It's one of the places left in the world where people still live with a big charge of poetry on a daily basis. I feel we've kind of lost that here in Europe.

Cronenberg's a lot of fun, and that a lot of people don't know watching his movies. He doesn't take himself seriously. He's still reinventing himself.