A biography for Jeanne Moreauhasn’t been written yet.
“To give and receive love, you have to be in touch with pain, you have to be capable of provoking it and feeling it.”
“Nostalgia is when you want things to stay the same. I know so many people staying in the same place.”
“When I'm acting, I'm two beings. There's the one monitoring the distance between myself and the camera, making sure I hit my marks, and there is the one driven by this inner fire, this delicious fear.”
“Life doesn't end at 30.”
“Although for some people cinema means something superficial and glamorous, it is something else. I think it is the mirror of the world.”
“I gradually work myself into a frenzy as the shoot approaches, while we're choosing the costumes or working with the make-up artist. I'm not so much interested in my character as the film itself.”
“Some people are addicts. If they don't act, they don't exist.”
“The cliche is that life is a mountain. You go up, reach the top and then go down.”
“I am subject to very powerful lows. When you have highs, you have terrible lows. When you pinpoint that you are responsible for everything that happens to you, it is very frightening.”
“You should not separate your life from what you do.”
“My aim in life is not to judge.”
“To give a character life in a short space of time, it helps if you arrive on screen with a past.”
“The life you had is nothing. It is the life you have that is important.”
“My life is very exciting now.”
“During rehearsals I am confronted by things very mysterious. I have terrific fights with inner demons, and it's more painful than it ever was.”
“Aging gracefully is supposed to mean trying not to hide time passing and just looking a wreck. Don't worry girls, look like a wreck, that's the way it goes.”
“When you live under the power of terror and segregation, you can't ever start a work of art.”
“I can be intimidating, but not within the confines of a film shoot.”
“My life is very exciting now. Nostalgia for what? It's like climbing a staircase. I'm on the top of the staircase, I look behind and see the steps. That's where I was. We're here right now. Tomorrow, we'll be someplace else. So why nostalgia?”
“I work more now because at this time of my life I am not disturbed from my aim by outside pressures such as family, passionate relationships, dealing with 'who am I?' - those complications when one is searching for one's self.”