Jacqueline Bisset Quotes

Time seems to stop in certain places.

I have never given up on men easily.

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

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 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.

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

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

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

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 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’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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

Working with Candy Bergen was really wonderful.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

I was never any good in the school theatrical productions. I always got a role like the March Hare. A Latin teacher told me I might make a good actress, and that stuck in my memory.

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 have emotional strings that tie me to Europe.

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 always loved men.

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 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 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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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