Top 19 Jean Dujardin Quotes

For me, I loved it. I only want to make silent movies now.

I feel very at home in an empty church. I feel the most protected. It’s very mystical.

This is a universal, unique movie, it has potential to cross barriers. But we never thought about that on set, when we were doing the film. We knew that in making a silent movie, we were doing something a little bit under the wire, a bit interdit. It’s a pastiche, but for the French taste, you would have thought.

It was actually quite easy to work with Uggie, because he’s a really well trained dog. Very talented. I just had to follow him a little bit, improvise a little bit. Sometimes he’d follow me. Especially because of the sausages I had in my pocket.

In France, I have lots of opportunities. Maybe now I’ll be offered films in America. It’s the encounter, with the director and the story that counts.

I think I’m more demanding than any wife.

I want to work with a director who becomes my brother, my father, for two months. You give yourself over to that person.

I don’t want to become a superstar and not see my family anymore.

I’m happiest on set because I’m not myself. I’m someone else. The moustache, the dinner jacket. It’s not me. You’re always this sort of double, and it’s liberating. Imagine being stuck with yourself… all those doubts.

I watched Gene Kelly for his smile, for his energy. Vittorio Gassman for his movement. Clark Gable for his mustache. And I watched Lassie who was happy as a dog.

I don’t want everyone to like me, and I don’t choose who likes me. You have to give them the choice, give them the option.

I watched a lot of Douglas Fairbanks movies. He always played the same role with a mustache. Zorro had a mustache. The Musketeer had a mustache. Tarzan had a mustache.

It’s quite pretentious, really, isn’t it? The notion the audience is going to be interested in you for an hour and a half. Think too much about that and anxiety takes over.

I like the hot-cold, the sugar-salt, being able to play over-the-top and dramatic things – in the same film. Just as in my life, I can be very funny and at other times almost extinguished.

I wasn’t dyslexic, I was just very slow. I passed my time daydreaming.

I discovered that silent film is almost an advantage. You just have to think of the feeling for it to show. No lines pollute it. It doesn’t take much – a gaze, an eyelash flutter – for the emotion to be vivid.

I don’t really know Hollywood, but living and shooting in L.A. was very motivating, inspiring. The lights, the extras, their American faces, the energy, the Orpheum Theatre. It was all very inspiring.

I’ve never concerned myself with the labels people want to put on you. What matters to me is my own estimation.

Just telling a story. That’s cinema. It’s not silent, black and white. It’s a simple story that’s well made.