Charlotte Rampling Quotations

To grieve is something extremely difficult, we don't even know how to begin to grieve, and I don't know how you can be taught to grieve.

I know I have great inner strength; I always have. I can blank things out, cut people out, and I know that I can go and live in a cave on my own if necessary.

I remember my father saying to me once, 'I finally know how to describe you, Charlotte. You're prickly.' And he was right - prickly is a very good description. If I had to be an animal, I'd probably be a porcupine.

Fashion is not trivial. It's a huge industry and a big part of our lives. Fashion is about us - how we look and present ourselves, how we can change ourselves, and our perceptions. You can dress up to be quite glorious creatures - it's all a very important part of life.

If you want to paint the inner life, you paint it from the exterior. From the exterior, you breathe the inner life into your painting.

If words don't have vibration behind them, and a real feeling behind them, then they're just words

Ever since I was a small child, I've had this feeling - it's in my nature, and so it's not even pretentious - that if everyone's going one way, I will go the other, just by some kind of spirit of defiance.

If you don't have a certain amount of stage fright, then it's not going to be that interesting. It's not going to have the inner vibration. I think screen work needs inner vibration.

I did that film just so I could kiss Robert Redford.

I must explore desert ground and see what can grow. But there are limits. I know in my heart what I would never do.

I am fascinated by the whole process of what it's like to be alive, whether it's unbelievably uncomfortable and horrible or whether it's quite nice

I'm very flattered to be called a style icon! But it's simple, my style; it's just men's suits and shoes. That's the basic premise.

Painting and photography keep the creative channel open, and for an actor, it's to keep alive, it's to keep awake, it's to keep watching, it's to keep feeling, it's to keep enjoying, to keep that sensuality of feeling alive.

French women have been made beautiful by the French people - they're very aware of their bodies, the way they move and speak, they're very confident of their sexuality. French society's made them like that

I've played the wicked mothers; I've played the serial-killer-type mothers now. They have to have an edge on them. They can't just be everyday moms, because I never thought of myself as an everyday person in cinema - I'm an everyday person in real life, like anyone. But not in what I project out there. I want something more exciting.

Quite often in life, when a tragic event arrives it becomes a springboard for mirroring all other things in one's life that one hasn't come to terms with

Training is fabulous because it gives you a basis, a strong structure, so that when you're unbelievably nervous and you think that you can't get a word out, you will get the word out.

What I am doing is not acting. I am playing myself.

For an actor, if you're not doing a job, you can't just practice acting. Your instrument is your whole person.

When I see a young girl, I can see why you would be attracted if you were a man. I remember when it was like that for me, too, and it was nice.

One of the reasons I don't see eye to eye with Women's Lib is that women have it all on a plate if only they knew it. They don't have to be pretty either.

I don't want to play everything. So I'll seek out roles that I'll say, 'This is edgy. This is fun. This is wicked. This suits me.'

I'm not very good at talking and being with people and being gregarious and outgoing. I love people, but I have great difficulty doing it.

You can never really judge your work because once it's done, it's done.

European films were what it was about for me - the sensations I needed, the depth, the storytelling, the characters, the directors, and the freedom that you can't really find in American films

The process of filmmaking is very musical, you get into the rhythm and the rhythmics of how someone is, especially with Woody Allen who is very much into body language and body movement.

I regret not having enough training, I trained for a year at The Royal Court, but I very quickly went off to do films and television.

You cannot watch yourself dispassionately.

A lot of young actors will do a scene and then run off and look at themselves. I don't believe in that at all

A film based on a jolly good John Grisham book is fine, but I like to get a bit under the skin

I think that most actors don't have very good opinions of themselves

Doing cinema is not about watching yourself

I got the O.B.E because I represent England outside of England more...but thinking of me as an actor, I haven't done all the classical theatre, all the great roles. Think of Helen Mirren and me. Helen, who I adore, is a friend - should be Dame. I am the rebel, the revolutionary on the side.

Close girlfriends I don't have necessarily, as an actress. Perhaps there is a thing of competition there, you know, when you're doing the same things, and you're the same age. I could be with younger actors, but woman of my age probably - there is and there isn't, one doesn't like to think of it, but I think there is a sense of competition. Which is good, also.

We can never know... But maybe it's because no black actors merited being nominated.Why put people into categories?

I know a lot about fear in itself, and lived with fear a lot. Lived with anxiety a lot, lived with the things that - most human beings, at some stage in their lives, are going to live with these feelings.

I've lived through deaths in my family and I've lived through separations in my family so those are the big ones. Those are the ones that press the biggest buttons in human beings' lives.

You become more and more charged with your life and with a life that you're observing. When I was younger, I was actually looking forward to getting older, to have more insight, more understanding. I'm much more tolerant with others and with myself. I'm not in rebellion all the time, I'm not angry so much. But all those feelings are really useful [when you're young] because they fire us, as long as they don't get out of control.

I'd had a French education for three years, my father being in the army. From 9 to 12, I went to French school. I've been sort of part of the culture, part of the geography, since I was quite young - the imprint was there. And I loved it.

I felt very special in Paris, more special than I felt in London. I love London for different reasons. I've always been close to London, being English. But somehow there's something special about living as an Englishwoman in Paris.

The '60s in London obviously brought about the explosion of music, the Beatles especially, and then the Rolling Stones and other forms of music, and then fashion and photography and films - kitchen-sink dramas we called them at that time, which was our nouvelle vague in Britain, films that talk about real life.

Cinema d'auteur, cinema about people, about emotions. About la difficulté d'être, the difficulty of being, existential problems. That's what the nouvelle vague is. The early '60s was all about that.

When I take on something , I take the whole thing on.It's not even a question of separating "Oh, am I going to be naked" I go with my whole person.

You give, actually, what you have in your inner world through your emotion and feeling. That's what you can give; it's not so much about "acting" in a sense of playing something that's very different to you.

There are moments when things just break apart and not really for very valid reasons, either. But they just change your life and make you go in different directions.

Because one has the animal instinct to seek out the people that suits one - you see people that go on life's journeys and get muddled along the way. If you look at their lives they've always gone with the wrong people... can you say it's the wrong people - I don't know...

You don't need the painful memories, because either you've resolved them. Denying always makes them want to come back. Denial is a mechanism that doesn't work. But allowing them to come back in little by little, those memories, you can begin to be quite comfortable with them, and it's even nice to have that as part of the map of your life.

By trying to control everything we become very neurotic, more and more desperate. It's a huge tragic thing.

I've always been monogamous - [within it] I've been in love with people, but very platonically. For me, monogamous love is about learning how to be able to trust someone completely; so you need to be able to think you can trust them. But that doesn't mean you can't have extraordinary feelings for other people and not feel guilty about them, but not necessarily go and wreck marriages and consummate, and you don't have to do all that.

We all have loads of information. What an actor does is bring it to the surface. I jump without a net because that's how I am. The information comes out because I am brave enough to allow it. I'm not brave as a human being in everyday life. I'm brave when I'm acting.

I can be seen as not being very communicative, or rather mysterious, or distant, or rather cold - all those things. Yeah, I know I can give off that impression. So I am that, too.

You go though a period of immense pain when reality meets the dream.

When I moved to Paris in the '70s, there wasn't very much going on in film in England. So when I started doing French films, there was a natural movement toward the kind of films I wanted to do. It wasn't the reason I came, but it so happened that I stepped into a time and place that actually corresponded to what I wanted. That sometimes happens in life. And it was rather beautiful.

You can't fool an audience with lots of bits and pieces. You have to lead them somewhere.

There's always a time for change, and you should never be frightened of it.

Ever since I was a small child, Ive had this feeling - its in my nature, and so its not even pretentious - that if everyones going one way, I will go the other, just by some kind of spirit of defiance.

I think you have to earn beauty. You can use it or abuse it however you want when you`re young. It`s a God-given gift. You have a visiting card - you can go into any room and someone will come and talk to you. But I`ve always thought from very early on that you have to be careful with that - not being vain or narcissistic. Have fun, but don`t be obsessed with it.

What beauty brings is huge. It brings great privilege, great power and potential to do many things. If you are beautiful, doors open for you; people smile at you; you are accepted in places where others aren't. So the relationship that people have with beauty, in a sense, is almost deforming.

I can occupy myself quite easily with what's going on inside me.

I am not qualified to be a Dame. To be Dame you have to represent England in a way that I don't.

She places in this young man all the desire and all the hope that she yearns for in her life, which finally turns out to be an imaginary life, but her imagination makes her really feel something for him.

One mysterious person looking at another mysterious person equals what? Another mystery.

I am fascinated by the variety of social content and political content in the films we will be judging. This is the kind of cinema I like a lot and the kind I think is very important.

I am always very intrigued and very fascinated by the variety of social comment and political comment and high-powered emotional content that you get through the films in Berlin.

I think the happiest time of my life was when I was in my late teens. I was a little bit of an it-girl. Making myself seen. And it was a wonderful time to be young.

I think what we do best, in the artistic world, are the things where we're handicapped.

It isn't sexual tourism as we know it now -- they want to imagine they are having love affairs. (Ellen) is looking for a dream of being loved, caressed and looked after by someone who gives her no opposition, ... The Damned.

I think the reason I have secrets is because there are a lot of things I haven't been able to let out, and I'm able to let them out through the screen and this medium.

My style very much leans towards the masculine, but I think I am feminine in it - I like the feminine body in masculine shapes. The androgynous look suits me.

My mother's incredible diaries, which she'd written from when she was 21, and even before that. She fell in love with my father when she was 12.

I was very friendly with Jimi Hendrix because my boyfriend at the time, Tommy Weber, was making a film about him, so I would go to all of his shows.

I was incredibly fatalistic. I just thought, 'If it works, it works.' But I've always been like that. I've never been easily impressed, and I've never thought I didn't deserve something. If I got it, then I deserved it.

The '60s in London obviously brought about the explosion of music, the 'Beatles' especially, and then the 'Rolling Stones' and other forms of music, and then fashion and photography and films - kitchen-sink dramas we called them at that time, which was our 'nouvelle vague' in Britain, films that talk about real life.

Usually, watching yourself is pretty awful. People think we all love watching our own films. We don't. We cringe away from it.

We are on the verge of this situation all our lives,

When a subject pops into a director's head, you either fit in there somewhere, or you don't. An actor is only who he is. Especially as you get older, there's not as much of a range of potentially feasible parts.

There are a lot of men of the same age in the same situation, so there will always be encounters to have as long as you're ready for them.

When people want to see your film, you're over the moon because you've actually made real contact. That's something very special.

We must be very careful when we say that somebody giving you compliments about your looks should be offensive. I think women really should look at why they're being offended by that.

I started writing diaries, and mine were horrible. Oh, the monotony. Oh, the angst. I said, 'I don't want anyone to find these!' I destroyed them.

It's sort of fun. If someone's eyeballing you, it makes you feel good.

I haven't got ambitions. Actually, I'm determined not to die until I get very old. I want to be a great-great-great-grandmother.

If you were to find all the people I've worked with and ask them what they think of me, they're all just going to say, 'Oh, wonderful', and it'll just be a lot of blah.

I am actually a very unspeaking person. I'm not really good in social situations. People expect me to be more outgoing. I don't know why. They think I have this kind of assurance.

I could have carried on in comedy. But my life was dark.

I could have been a superstar in America - I was certainly taken out there. But I said, 'No way, Jose, I'm not staying here in this madhouse.'

Go out there and try on everything - short skirts, long skirts, mid length, little jackets, men's clothing - and really look at yourself; really walk around in the clothes. Don't just take someone else's advice. You must feel you in these clothes and feel what it's like to live in them.

You decide to give your trust over to somebody. And if you don't decide to, then for me, it's really not worth going into collective enterprises; you should just work alone.