Jacqueline Bisset

“When you share work, and you have the opportunity of seeing people you like doing what they do best, and you also interchange socially with them, it's very addictive.”

“You need to become a good listener. As you're working, you hear someone else's lines and how you absorb them becomes your acting.”

“I'd like to work more, but I don't just want to do kind of generic characters. I want to do interesting characters, and I'd like to be cast against type.”

“I went to see Oliver Stone's 'Heaven & Earth,' which I thought was a wonderful movie, but I walked out because I was so moved. It was too painful to watch.”

“Sometimes you like the personal adventure implicit in the making of a film, and sometimes you like your part in a film, and sometimes you like the final result.”

“Being around people with whom you feel a connection, on many levels, not just a professional one, is very relaxing. Your ears are more open to someone who is not a cantankerous bastard.”

“I have always watched the rushes, and have learned more because I have done so, because you can have all manner of ideas in your head, but they have to end up on the screen.”

“There's something about being with a group of people who become like family that must be needed in society.”

“This film business, perhaps more so in America than in Europe, has always been about young sexuality. It's not true of theatre, but in America, film audiences are young. It's not an intellectual cinema in America.”

“I get called Jacqueline Bissette in America. In France, I get called Jackie Bisset. And actually, it is Jacqueline Bisset, which is not that easy to say.”

“Character contributes to beauty. It fortifies a woman as her youth fades. A mode of conduct, a standard of courage, discipline, fortitude, and integrity can do a great deal to make a woman beautiful.”

“I think I am an adult.”

“I have emotional strings that tie me to Europe.”

“I had no aspirations to be part of American cinema... I was really a Europe-based person, and those were the films I was inspired by.”

“At first I was always cast as the girlfriend. It was a long time before I got to play characters who were people.”

“I love being in my garden. I don't plant a lot of exotic flora, but I do spend a lot of time outside doing manual labour.”

“At the time, 1980, people regarded actresses involved with production with a certain amount of fear, resentment and anger.”

“I can't believe I've been doing it so long. In the last three or four years, I've slowed down. I'm doing only the roles I really want to do.”

“Of course, you see your body changing as you age, but it's more important to live than be too preoccupied with that sort of thing. I think ultimately what people care about in other people is the energy, the spirit.”

“I always had cats and animals, so children were never really in my thoughts.”