Jacqueline Bisset Quotations

A mode of conduct, a standard of courage, discipline, fortitude and integrity can do a great deal to make a woman beautiful.

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.

I'd like to get my public image nearer to my reality. People have a lot of misconceptions.

I wanted to go to acting school, and I did a few modeling jobs to pay for acting school. I never aspired to be a model. I met lots of photographers, and I learned a lot about light - as a source of love and illumination, light as a gift of love. On film, that's a massive contribution.

My view is quite simple. When your dog pees on the carpet, you do not give away your dog. You say, This dog is special. I have to teach him not to pee on the carpet. I feel exactly the same way about men. They need to be taught things.

A lot of actors work too much. There comes a point where it's hard to mask your basic personality. It's a bit like a relationship. If you're always there, they can't desire you.

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.

There is an eternal humanity that crosses through all people, and it's more interesting often when it's about struggle - not people with champagne glasses.

Ideally, couples need three lives; one for him, one for her, and one for them together.

I'm quite happy being myself. I'm a big fan of Jessica Lange and Jeanne Moreau, but I don't want to be anyone else.

I want to keep my attractiveness as long as I can. It has to do with vitality and energy and interest.

I have an intense obsession with making films. I not only love to make films, I perhaps need to make films.

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.

You can sometimes learn more working with less talented people, because you learn to survive.

I've probably understood men too well. I realise they are predatory by nature, and I have a certain acceptance of the male animal.

I work hard, and I tend to play hard. I very seldom rest hard.

We all lose our looks eventually, better develop your character and interest in life.

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

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

I am a great lover of art, in many forms: paintings, objets, textiles. I don't have the talent for painting, but I have a very good sense of colour, a love of visual beauty.

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.

When I am working on a movie, all I want to talk about is the movie. All I want to be with are the movie people. It's like a clan. If I'm asked to people's houses for dinner, I hate to go, because they'll talk about other things.

I work very hard at relationships. I've done the thing of being home. I worked all day and came home and did all the stuff at home that a woman is supposed to do, the cooking and the entertaining. I'm a perfectionist, and, besides, I loved all those things.

I've done five films directed by women. I did like it. They had qualities, particularly in the romantic tenderness of scenes. I felt sometimes they were a little bit soft, but maybe they were clever to get the guys working the way they wanted them to.

I have very intense conversations with friends, people I really interconnect with. We talk about politics, important things. I like to talk about ideas and get people to be specific.

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

The thing about anything in life is you have to get ready for it. Study, learn.

A Latin teacher told me I might make a good actress, and that stuck in my memory. I did some modeling, and Polanski gave me that small part.

I'm a very nurturing kind of person and a sort of a homemaker. I'm just interested in things remaining fresh.

I don't come in with any preconceived ideas, and although I will have done some preparation, I can go which way the director wants.

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.

People make sequels a lot in Hollywood, and sometimes it feels like there's never an original thought.

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.

Your voice is your tool and represents you. It's very important to have a good voice where you can be understood.

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.

I have watched people who have nothing to do with the film business, but who have become part of the circle for a short period of time. They can be truly devastated when the film wraps and people leave.

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.

To be used in a part without depth is a frustrating feeling, when you know you have something to give.

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

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.

I grew up in a small town about 40 miles outside London, but it was a fairly cosmopolitan household.

I have emotional strings that tie me to Europe.

I have never given up on men easily.

I really feel that the talent I have is acting. Freedom and the possibility of play-that is what I like to have.

I was never any good in the school theatrical productions. I always got a role like the March Hare.

I'm a perfectionist. I need to be needed. I need to do things for a man. But I don't need to do them as much, these days.

Some people have said that I haven't got the parts I should've got because of the way I look.

What I realized on the 'Grasshopper' was that I wasn't sure that I liked being in every shot. It wasn't fun.

I think the grandfather of the set is the director. He needs to have authority, to do what people want. A warm grandfather; he needs to know his job, to be open.

I could never have conceived that I would ever get to work in a Truffaut film. It was astonishing to me, and still is. I felt like an old pro, but it was still so unexpected.

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.

I went to the premiere of The Detective with Sinatra, and perhaps people jumped to conclusions. He was very protective towards me and never came on to me sexually.

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'm either offered window-dressing parts in large movies or little art films no one ever sees. People think the movies I end up doing are my real choices. I do the best things I'm offered.

Not everyone likes watching rushes, but it makes me work harder, and I don't feel I am watching myself, but watching the progression of the character.

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.

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.

Ideally, couples need three lives; one for him, one for her and one for them together

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.

You've got to work on your voice, it's your tool and represents you. It's very important to have a good voice where you can be understood.

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

I want to keep my attractiveness as long as I can. It has to do with vitality, and energy and interest. We all lose our looks eventually, better develop your character and interest in life.

My looks are changing obviously, so I fuss like any woman if I look tired or whatever, I put on weight and blah, blah. But some part of me is very relaxed with it all.

I consider myself a character actress, and that's working out. I'm getting chances to do things. I like the process - I don't want to pretend I'm something other than what I am.

Working with Candy Bergen was really wonderful.

I think I am an adult.

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.

The people who've given me sh-t, I say - like my mother - what did she say? She used to say, 'Go to hell and don't come back.' However, however, however, my mother was not entirely me.

You need to get in touch with your body ... do dance, movement, learn to be supple, or be someone who's coordinated, preferably. You have to study, train, and you don't have to go to school necessarily, you can teach yourself a lot of stuff.

The deeper interior you have the more you have in your llibrary.

You have to forgive everybody. It's the best beauty treatment.

Success as a woman has changed me. That's what I feel is the first thing. When I feel like a successful woman as a rounded human being, then it feeds my work in a broader way so it becomes more interesting.

Character contributes to beauty.

Marriage has just never interested me.

The thing about anything in life is you have to get ready for it. Study, learn and in terms of acting, there's a lot to learn. The bigger culture you have in life, the better actor you'll be. You'll have more to pull on.

Making the decision to do more serious work raises eyebrows. It's less easy for the industry to deal with....

Older people exude bundles of sexuality. Older men and women tend not run around like cats and dogs in heat.

If people choose to judge how you look, that's their situation. I didn't feel that it was a problem. I've played all kinds of parts. I've played glamorous, and unglamorous, and all kinds of people. People want to pigeon hole you, I think.

What comes first in a relationship is lust - then more lust.

Best beauty tip is forgiveness for yourself and others

Character contributes to beauty. It fortifies a woman as her youth fades.