The smouldering eroticism of great European actresses like Jeanne Moreau demonstrated to my generations women's archetypal mystery and glamour, completely missing from the totalitarian world-view of the misogynist Foucault. For me, the big French D is not Derrida, but Deneuve.

"My favorite moment in Jeanne Moreau's latest movie — a comedy called The Summer House — takes place in a kitchen, when she proclaims that every human has something to cry about. When mocked by the owner of the kitchen and pressed to say what it is that we have to cry about, she tosses back her head of flaming red hair and says, "The winds of solitude roaring at the edge of infinity.

Bowie's a real man, and I'm a real woman — just like Catherine Deneuve.

What I love about Celine, what I felt really proud about that script, is that she's really a fully dimensional woman. It's very rare in movies that you don't see a male projection of a fantasy woman. I mean, Julie deserves 90% of the credit, 100% of the credit, but I feel proud of the collaboration that created that character. Her work in that movie is my favorite thing about it.

The most perfect caricature is that which, on a small surface, with the simplest means, most accurately exaggerates, to the highest point, the peculiarities of a human being, at his most characteristic moment in the most beautiful manner.

Katharine Hepburn delivered a striking performance that ran the gamut of emotions, from A to B.

Her sculptured face was as perfect as a painting.

The Academy should give Caitlin a fucking Oscar. She delivered her scripted lines perfectly, even improvising beautifully with the "Uncle Tucker" bit. And I should get an award for choreography or something.

Miss [Marilyn] Monroe, complete with hushed, monotonous voice and with eye makeup even after a night in the mountains, copes more successfully with the neurotic than with the "elemental" qualities in her part. But at her best we sense that she has been coached and primed in thirty-second segments, which wouldn't matter if we weren't aware of it. Her hysterical scene near the end will seem virtuoso acting to those who are overwhelmed by the fact that she has been induced to shout.

Feminine delicacy was carried to excess in Mme de Renal.

It has been said that on screen I personified the American woman.

Cecile Kayiregawa, who plays [the elder nun], is a renowned singer in Rwanda and for anyone who knows that place, [what] it was like to have her, to be able to work with her and to capture her in this film — she’s really revered, it was like meeting a queen.

At present I have a portrait of a woman [Madame Roulin].. .Which I've called 'la berceuse', . .It's a woman dressed in green (bust olive green and the skirt pale Veronese green). Her hair is entirely orange and in plaits. The complexion worked up in chrome yellow, with a few broken tones, of course, in order to model. The hands that hold the cradle cord ditto ditto. The background is vermilion at the bottom (simply representing a tiled floor or brick floor). The wall is covered with wallpaper, obviously calculated by me in connection with the rest of the colours. This wallpaper is blue-green with pink dahlias and dotted with orange and with ultramarine.. .Whether I've actually sung a lullaby with colour I leave to the critics..

We saw some amazing actresses for this part. But when Karen came through the door, the game was up — she was funny, clever, gorgeous and sexy. Or Scottish, which is the quick way of saying it. A generation of little girls will want to be her. And a generation of little boys will want them to be her too.