Inflight Magazine of Brussels Airlines

In person

Isabelle Huppert

The acclaimed French actress talks to b.there! about travelling the world, the secrets of acting success and why the movie business is tougher than ever for young actresses

The best part of travelling is when you first arrive. I love cities in general – I’ve just come back from Istanbul, which I’d never been to before. I loved it, I thought there was such electricity. But what I love about my profession is that it gives me the chance to arrive in an unknown city and have that sense of discovery. It’s priceless.

Paris is my home, but I like to be away. There’s no danger that I will ever be withdrawn from my roots or my home. And I like to be away.

When you’re on a film set, you always have a sense of being at home. When you’re away doing movies, you aren’t really away. There’s such a protected net around you. It’s not like being in the middle of nowhere – it’s a secure way of being away. You’re able to recreate your little space and your little home. The movie set itself is like a home.

I’ve never really felt ‘directed’ on a film set. I always feel ready for new experiences, for new encounters, for new films. But I’ve never felt directed in a way. I don’t feel that any actor is really directed in a sense you can understand it.

It’s important to me to work with new film-makers. I know what it is to do a movie with a first-time director and to do a movie with someone such as Claude Chabrol, who’s done so many films before. Yes, there is a difference, but that difference in itself is productive. It’s not sterile – I’m not scared of it. It’s quite interesting and sometimes moving to see someone creating their own cinematic language.

My motivation for making films is still the same as it was when I was younger. I always try to identify the point of high necessity when choosing a film – that’s what it’s about. When you think a movie has to be done, then it can be a success or it can be a failure. But no matter what it is in the end, at the moment of choosing to do it, you have to do it with this extreme feeling of necessity. That’s what you have to identify when deciding to do a film.

Success is relative. Of course, you can be successful and it means a lot, but also it can mean nothing in a way. So it’s certainly not something on which you can rely. What does it mean to be successful? Yes, you are famous, but it doesn’t mean that whenever you raise your little finger you are successful.

I think it’s a really female thing to be an actor. We’re more at ease with the passivity of acting. It’s a very specific kind of passivity – it’s being active and passive at the same time. We certainly deal with this much more gracefully than men do, that’s for sure.

I’ve been approached to direct, but I’ve always said no. Maybe I will one day, but it just requires such enormous energy – and a very different energy from that required when you’re an actress. Of course, you need a lot of energy when you’re an actress, too, but you’re not in charge of the whole thing. It’s different – it’s a change of status in terms of power. You have a certain power as an actress, but when you become a director it’s a different power. You have to take decisions. I don’t know if I have the right psychological profile for that. Maybe yes and maybe no.

I think it’s the worst time for young actresses. I think each generation has setbacks and advantages, but they all seem to me so tough and they know what they want to do - much more than I used to. There’s a lack of innocence because people are so informed about everything now, but that doesn’t mean they know something because information doesn’t necessarily mean knowing, or culture. But they’re suddenly informed so they know the rules, they know how it goes and it gives a feeling of being very sure of oneself. But the problem isn’t to do something for the first time. The problem is to do it for the second time and the third time - to really be in it for the long run.

I don’t believe there are no oles for er actresses. I think that’s a cliché. I’m not at all into this kind of statement. I think you have good roles everywhere for everyone. OK, not everyone gets good roles, but it’s not a matter of age or nationality.

Hollywood doesn’t mean anything to me. I don’t have this inferiority complex. I think it’s quite pathetic when people have this idea – this very naïve idea – of going to Hollywood, but it doesn’t mean anything. It means something, sometimes, to do an American film, whether it’s a studio film or an independent one, but it doesn’t mean anything for me to go to Hollywood.

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