"Jeanne Moreau doesn’t make you think of a flirtation but of love.
Unlike so many actors and actresses who can’t manage to act except by means of conflicts and tensions, to the point of sometimes confusing “concentration” with those camps of sinister memory, Jeanne Moreau is at her best in a merry and tender working environment, which she does her bit to create and which she helps preserve even when there are powerful emotions to be projected. Generosity, ardor, complicity, comprehension of human fragility: all of that can be read on the screen when Jeanne Moreau is acting.
In all my twenty years of cinema, the filming of Jules et Jim, thanks to Jeanne Moreau, remains a luminous memory, the most luminous."
"Life is an accomplishment. Each moment has a meaning and you must use it. Life is given to you like a flat piece of land and everything has to be done. I hope that when I’m finished, my piece of land will be a beautiful garden."
– Jeanne
"I have such curiosity, much more than an erotic curiosity, such a tender curiosity about men, about the vulnerable mystery a man is."
– Jeanne Moreau
"If I get concerned with what kind of part I would like to play, I would then start to wonder what roles would be good for me, good for my career, pleasing for the public. Life does not invite this choice and neither should films."
– Jeanne Moreau
"I do not think that for human beings the physical beauty is totally separated from inner beauty. Your mood shows on your face. That is something that comes from the inside. If you’re in a good mood there is something different about your complexion, the light in your eyes, your mouth doesn’t droop. There is energy coming out of you."
– Jeanne
"The woman is passionate, the actress is passionately enthralling. If I imagine her at a distance, I do not see her reading a newspaper but a book.
Jeanne Moreau doesn’t make you think of a flirtation but of love.
Unlike so many actors and actresses who can’t manage to act except by means of conflicts and tensions, to the point of sometimes confusing “concentration” with those camps of sinister memory, Jeanne Moreau is at her best in a merry and tender working environment, which she does her bit to create and which she helps preserve even when there are powerful emotions to be projected. Generosity, ardor, complicity, comprehension of human fragility: all of that can be read on the screen when Jeanne Moreau is acting.
In all my twenty years of cinema, the filming of Jules et Jim, thanks to Jeanne Moreau, remains a luminous memory, the most luminous."
– François Truffaut - 1979
"The love, suffering, and happiness I experience in life appear in my movies, become an integral part of them. When I see a film after I’ve made it, I see my own life before me."
– Jeanne
"My life is very exciting now. Nostalgia for what? It’s like climbing a staircase. I’m on the top of the staircase, I look behind and see the steps. That’s where I was. We’re here right now. Tomorrow, we’ll be someplace else. So why nostalgia?"
– Jeanne Moreau
"Life is just a lot of interesting landscapes and one makes one’s own geography."
– Jeanne
"Making a film is like life aboard ship, except that every day is an emergency."
– Jeanne
"Aging gracefully is supposed to mean trying not to hide time passing and just looking a wreck. Don’t worry girls, look like a wreck, that’s the way it goes."
– Jeanne Moreau
"I never use the word ‘career’, it’s a journalistic term. I can’t separate creation from life."
– Jeanne
