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Juliette Binoche Shares Six Thoughts on Acting

It is an honor to have the iconic actress Juliette Binoche at the 12^th edition of FICM. She has received numerous awards at major film festivals, including Best Actress at the Venice International Film Festival in 1993, the Cannes Film Festival in 2010 and the Berlin International Film Festival, Berlinale, in 1997.

In a master conference at the Teatro Ocampo in Morelia, Juliette Binoche shared her experiences as an actress with the public – from the ways in which she addresses different projects, to her opinion on makeup.

We present a selection of six of the actress’s reflections on her acting career:

1. Sometimes I arrive early at the set and spend time with the team, since this allows me to integrate them as an extension of myself and not interrupt the process of personifying the characters that I want to become.
2. It’s essential not to repeat yourself because, besides being boring, you die that way. So the question is, how do you build something new? It’s a big question, one that each of us should ask ourselves.
3. Acting is a commitment. They’re words that don’t exist and actors work with the imagination all the time. Those words are written from a real place and these ideas have to find a place. And you have to rely on the memories that are inside your body in the form of sensations. Without feelings, there is no good acting.
4. My job as an actress is to be in contact with the invisible. That means that I’m conscious that I have a body, that there are people around and that I’ve read the script. How can I connect these parts with my emotions and personify the truth that comes from the bottom of my heart and the depths of my body and make it something real and accessible?
5. Acting is like being in love. There is a real reaction that happens and it is beyond time and space. And you have to be visible in the pores of your skin, so sometimes it bothers me when they put too much makeup on me.
6. Use your life and experiences as human beings in an artistic way so that people can see them and interact with them. Why do we go and see forms of art? To be enriched, to be in touch with ourselves, to test some emotions that we can use someday. So the responsibility of actors is to be the bridge between what is written and the big cameras, the great technicians. The actor is not important, but what happens via the actor is important.

You can see Juliette Binoche’s complete master conference: here

                                               Coverage by Fabiola Aguilar Díaz (@panoramafunky)