“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.”
― Charlotte Rampling
“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.”
― Charlotte Rampling
“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.”
― Charlotte Rampling
“For an actor, if you’re not doing a job, you can’t just practice acting. Your instrument is your whole person.”
― Charlotte Rampling
“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.”
― Charlotte Rampling
“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.”
― Charlotte Rampling
“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.”
― Charlotte Rampling
“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.”
― Charlotte Rampling
“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.”
― Charlotte Rampling
“If words don’t have vibration behind them, and a real feeling behind them, then they’re just words.”
― Charlotte Rampling
“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.”
― Charlotte Rampling
“A film based on a jolly good John Grisham book is fine, but I like to get a bit under the skin.”
― Charlotte Rampling
“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.”
― Charlotte Rampling
“You can never really judge your work because once it’s done, it’s done.”
― Charlotte Rampling
“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.”
― Charlotte Rampling
“Doing cinema is not about watching yourself.”
― Charlotte Rampling
“You cannot watch yourself dispassionately.”
― Charlotte Rampling
“I think that most actors don’t have very good opinions of themselves.”
― Charlotte Rampling
“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.”
― Charlotte Rampling
“I did that film just so I could kiss Robert Redford.”
― Charlotte Rampling
“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.”
― Charlotte Rampling
“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.”
― Charlotte Rampling
“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.”
― Charlotte Rampling
“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.”
― Charlotte Rampling
“I could have carried on in comedy. But my life was dark.”
― Charlotte Rampling
“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.”
― Charlotte Rampling
“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.”
― Charlotte Rampling
“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.”
― Charlotte Rampling
“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.”
― Charlotte Rampling
“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.”
― Charlotte Rampling
“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.”
― Charlotte Rampling
“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.”
― Charlotte Rampling
“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.”
― Charlotte Rampling
“One mysterious person looking at another mysterious person equals what? Another mystery.”
― Charlotte Rampling
“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.”
― Charlotte Rampling
“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.’”
― Charlotte Rampling
“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.”
― Charlotte Rampling
“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.”
― Charlotte Rampling
“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.”
― Charlotte Rampling
“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.”
― Charlotte Rampling
“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.”
― Charlotte Rampling
“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.”
― Charlotte Rampling
“Usually, watching yourself is pretty awful. People think we all love watching our own films. We don’t. We cringe away from it.”
― Charlotte Rampling
“I think what we do best, in the artistic world, are the things where we’re handicapped.”
― Charlotte Rampling
“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.”
― Charlotte Rampling
“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.”
― Charlotte Rampling
“When people want to see your film, you’re over the moon because you’ve actually made real contact. That’s something very special.”
― Charlotte Rampling
“What I am doing is not acting. I am playing myself.”
― Charlotte Rampling
“It’s sort of fun. If someone’s eyeballing you, it makes you feel good.”
― Charlotte Rampling
“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.”
― Charlotte Rampling
“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.”
― Charlotte Rampling
“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.”
― Charlotte Rampling
“I must explore desert ground and see what can grow. But there are limits. I know in my heart what I would never do.”
― Charlotte Rampling
“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.’”
― Charlotte Rampling
“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.”
― Charlotte Rampling
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