Vincent Cassel
Vincent Cassel
Vincent Casselis a French actor best known to English-speaking audiences through his film performances in Ocean's Twelve and Ocean's Thirteen, as well as Black Swan. Cassel is also renowned for playing the infamous French bank-robber and folk hero Jacques Mesrine in Mesrine: Killer Instinct and Mesrine: Public Enemy Number One...
NationalityFrench
ProfessionMovie Actor
Date of Birth23 November 1966
CityParis, France
CountryFrance
Neither of us are workaholics. I think the key thing is to accept that if you only exist through what you do, then you become what you do, and this is very wrong.
There is this idea that its very different from the French point of view to work in America blah, blah, blah. But I think its different from one person to the other, not from one country to the other.
I think American audiences like gangster movies. It's part of the culture.
I'm producing more, but I think to direct, one has to have a burning desire, and that's not me. I'd rather do something else.
Yes. The way people behave, the paradoxes, the contradictions. All these things we have to live with and still pretend that everything is only black or white. That, I think, is the most interesting thing in human nature. The fact that we have to do one thing and pretend something else. That’s when it becomes very interesting. If you can literally speak the way you feel, then it’s not interesting anymore. It’s when you have to lie that it becomes interesting.
Coming from Paris, I'd really like to live in Rio. I think it's gotten better. It's not as violent. The economy is better. The middle class is rising.
When you have a bunch of scripts that you have to read, the less you have, the better it is, because otherwise, everything is already planned and I think that's a terrible feeling.
I think life is short, and you can't spend time doing things just to be on set to reassure yourself that people are not going to forget about you.
I think I'm actually more vulnerable than people imagine.
I don't really shop any more. I only do it when I have to. I think it is very overrated.
I really like romantic comedies and light movies and everything but I think - I don't know where it comes from - but when you're doing violent movies, you're closer to reality.
I feel like the so-called bad guys are never totally bad. I guess it's the closest thing I can do to reality: people act nice but nobody really is nice. We all have to balance that with something dark.
Working with David Cronenberg or Darren Aronofsky or even Steven Soderbergh isn't really like a typical Hollywood movie. These are true artists, and have a certain amount of freedom when they work, and they're more like independent filmmakers making their way through big studios.
When eventually I started to act a bit more, I realised that circus school had taught me something that a lot of actors my age didn't have: physicality. They didn't know how to move. Acting is not all about talking. There is something animalistic about it.