[on acting] I don't think you learn how to act. You learn how to use your emotions and feelings, and my first teacher was my mother [Niseema Theillaud] and then I worked with my father [Jean-Claude Cotillard], who helped me to find in myself all those emotions and how to play with the emotions.

[on accepting the best actress Oscar for La Vie En Rose (2007) (aka "La Vie en Rose")] Thank you life, thank you love, and - it is true - there [are] some angels in this city [Los Angeles].

Did a man really walk on the moon? I saw plenty of documentaries on it, and I really wondered. And in any case I don't believe all they tell me, that's for sure.

[on her French accent] The first thing I have to do to erase my French accent is think that it is actually possible, whereas for the moment, I think it's not. I have a lot of work.

My parents always told me that if you want something, you can do whatever you have to do to get it. As long as it's not against someone else.

I have a tendency to often share the point of view of the conspiracy theory.

[on extreme characters] I do like extreme characters, but I think they are extreme because they are full of passion - they are rich inside. Tina Lombardi [from A Very Long Engagement (2004)] was such a beautiful character. What I love in her is that she's not a cliché of the femme fatale. She's just a girl who loves her man and feels desperate about losing him. It's not just about revenge. She is in that huge country, searching for something. She's lost, destroyed inside.

[on the beginning of her career as a child] I started in musicals when I was very young. Both my parents are stage actors, and I was fascinated by their jobs. My father was a mime. When I was 5, a director friend of my family put me in his movie. I played a little girl with a dog, but I remember my scenes and I was entranced by acting. It was a dream to me - the passion of the profession was contagious.

The first English-language movie I saw might have been E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982). I remember I was so into it, I cried so loud that the audience around me wanted to take me out of the theater.

[on her Public Enemies (2009) character] She's a real product of this really tough period in American history. Out of the Depression came all of these people who struggled to live. Billie had no money, and she came from an Indian tribe, which, at the time, was not easy. By the time she came to Chicago and met Dillinger, she had already lived several lives - she had been to military boarding school, to learn military manners, to "get the Indian out." She's a mix of someone really sweet and tough.

When I was a little girl, I always wanted to be in a musical, an American musical. I knew Singin' in the Rain (1952) by heart.

I think that when you don't see the boundaries, you cross them without even knowing they exist in the first place.

I need to feel that for a director it's a matter of life and death; he needs to tell this story.

I adore my own life, more and more I love being myself, but I love this work of totally changing personalities, of creating something radically different from myself. I want to go profoundly into my roles. If not, what's the point?

[on Rust and Bone (2012) in which she plays a woman who has lost both legs in an accident] In the beginning of the film she is empty, she doesn't know who she is or why she;'s alive. She is numb. It's as if she were drugged. I have never experimented with hard drugs, but I've been at certain moments of my life in a state of shock close to something where you lose your footing, your sense of reality. I think that's the gift of the actor, the ability to put ourselves in a state.

[on working with director Jacques Audiard in Rust and Bone (2012)] Once he stopped a scene and said, 'How dramatic are YOU? Dramatic, dramatic, dramatic! It's boring!' We laughed, and it could seem a bit rude, but he was right. We were happy to have someone with that kind of genius to help us avoid going in the direction of things that are perhaps realistic but are not at all cinematic. And that's why he's a great director.

[on reincarnation] I don't know if we have many lives of if I will be reincarnated into a next life, but I really do think that when you die, it doesn't stop.

[on her musical career] A friend called me up who is an amazing singer who goes by the name Yodelice (Maxim Nucci). He said, "Would you come to the studio? I would love for you to sing one of my songs." So I went down and ended up going from a background singer to being in a duet. Then my friend said he was playing at the Olympia in Paris. So he asked me if I would sing with him there and I said, "Oh, yeah, of course." I went to rehearsals with them and he asked me, "Would you play bass guitar?" I had never played bass guitar before but it has always been my dream to play bass guitar. He said, "Just try it for a few songs." I took the bass guitar and suddenly it was so organic. So he said to me, "Would you play piano on this song?" I said, "I don't even play piano!" He told me to try. I took piano lessons when I was like 5 or 6 but that was a long time ago. I stopped when I was 13. But suddenly it was very organic when I started playing it. So he said, "How about playing the drums?" He made me try, and it went on and on like this for a week. I was part of the band, playing all of the instruments. One day I arrived at rehearsal and my friend said, "Okay, now that you've done everything else, how about singing a song by yourself alone?" I said, "Man, you are way out of your mind." But we did it and I ended up on tour with Yodelice for two months, traveling around to shows in different cities in France and Belgium.

[on The Dark Knight Rises (2012)] I didn't have a major part in the Batman movie, but I had to be available for it at all times. The script changed constantly, and I needed to be ready to get on the next plane and be on set as soon as they needed me.

I'm not somebody who opens up to people very easily. With this form of expression,I think I've found a way to speak to a lot of people and share something of myself, while still keeping my distance. I don't have anything against people who bare their souls to the media. I just know I can't do it. I want to share things that seem practical to me. It's the same if I go to a dinner party with guests I don't know. I'm not going to share my life story with them.

[on her school days] At school I was that black thing in the corner. I was not popular at all. I think I was very boring... not boring because I didn't talk, no, no it was terrible. I was not interesting at all. I thought I had no personality. I thought everybody was so cool, and I was not. You think things about yourself and then you start to give a little bit of love at least enough, to enjoy life. But I was, oooh.

I couldn't leave the character on La Vie En Rose (2007). It was weird because I used to kind of judge actors who would stay in character on set or who would have a hard time leaving the character behind when the movie was done. I had this very dumb idea that "Okay, it's a big part of your life but it's your job. Go home and go back to yourself." It turns out it's not that easy. In the process I was in character almost all the time. Even when I went home, there was something that was not entirely me.

[on singing] I'm a very happy actress. But I've always loved to sing because in my childhood my mother would sing all the time. I cannot remember one journey in the car without singing. So music is part of my life.

[on blockbusters] I feel very lucky that I can travel from one very special universe to another very special universe. My experience in Hollywood with the big blockbuster, though, is very special too, because it's a blockbuster directed, written, produced by Christopher Nolan, who's not a studio director. I need to work with directors who have the need to tell a story - and he is definitely a director who needs to tell stories.

[on what changed her life] It's not the fame that changed my life but La Vie En Rose (2007), which was a turning point for me. It put me in a different universe and gave me the opportunity to really discover different worlds. But I'm not like some celebrities who live with paparazzi 24 hours a day. That's why I'm keeping my life in France.

[on becoming a mother] Since having Marcel, every day of my life has been alight with him. One of the things I have learned recently is that I have the ability to be happy. I have found that in my family. And that is a new thing. And that hasn't always been the case for me - so I know how lucky I am.

[on her character in Rust and Bone (2012)] I think Stéphanie has moved me more than any character I've ever played. She rediscovers the carnal, sexuality, love. Everything is very positive in the tragedy she faces.

[on the first time she liked filming sex scenes in a movie with Rust and Bone (2012)] I've never liked filming them as I don't feel comfortable. I am shaking; I feel very bad and I want to cry most of the time because I hate it so much. But here it was totally different. I was so involved with my character that I was happy she would enjoy something like that. It's a movie about love, about flesh, about rust and bone and heart and sex, so without the sex scenes the movie would have missed something. The most emotional scene was after Stéphanie and Alain (Matthias Schoenaerts) make love for the first time, because I felt something that I never felt for a character before. I felt very moved for her because it's the first time she's had sex since she lost her legs. I was very moved because I was so happy for her.

[on being exposed and judged because of her career] Nothing can ever be taken for granted in this métier. It makes you very exposed and that can be violent. I'm strong but also fragile, and sometimes it's not easy to be exposed to judgment, and to play with your emotions, to go searching inside yourself to make yourself naked to the world.

I think this desire to protect the Earth comes from my family - especially my grandmother. I remember when I was a little girl at her house in Brittany. When she cooked, she wouldn't waste anything. And my parents always raised me to believe that the most important thing was respect. Respect the place you live, be aware of the impact that you have on things. I was lucky to have this education growing up. I was born in Paris and raised in the suburbs and then lived in the countryside. We had a beautiful house with a huge garden. When I moved to the country, I was really connected to nature and the seasons. So when I finally went back to Paris, I had a very hard time connecting with the city again and the way we waste so much. I started to read and teach myself about the environment - and why it was not organic and natural to be living in the city. I'm very happy with what's happening now and how the awareness is spreading. Because 10 years ago my mind-set wasn't really normal for most people. I sounded like a crazy person talking about the environment. People saw me as a hippie who wanted to make my own cheese and live with animals in a house without electricity.

When I was younger, I considered a lot of things, but I couldn't choose, so I thought that being an actor would let me have many lives. It was a way to do all the jobs I wanted to do.

I just want to do my best. I just want to find the authenticity of each character. That's what matters to me. It would be horrible to have an audience saying, 'Oh it's her.' It would be horrible. I want to experience something new each time.

I was fascinated by this world of telling stories, of having a different day every day. And my parents were -- still are -- passionate people, and to be raised with passionate people who open the door of your imagination and your creativity, I think it's why I am an actress now.

[on working in Hollywood] I feel very lucky that I can work in Hollywood. When I was a kid, I watched a lot of American movies and I never thought this was something that would happen to me. But once I started acting I didn't see any boundaries. I wanted to be an actress. I didn't want to be a French actress.

[on her sex scenes in Rust and Bone (2012)] The sex and flesh is part of the story. It's not sensational or a statement at all, it had to be in there. You know how you feel when you rediscover your body, love, your life. That's what happens to both these characters and I think that is very sexy.

[on beauty] I was raised with the idea of beauty in a different way. To me, it is something that really comes out of you and surrounds you.

[on choose a different career] Well, I could have never done a profession that was not creative. You know, there's a fighter inside of me. When you have the capacity to fight, when you have the ability to love life and the ability to be happy, it's easy to be creative. And that's a treasure that my parents gave me.

[on fashion] To be honest, I didn't consider fashion to be an art until I became involved with Dior. They changed my vision of fashion whereas I never paid attention to it before. Although I loved to dress and I liked clothes, now I see it as a very special form of art.

I looked terrible while filming La Vie En Rose (2007), so my hat collection increased dramatically. I love men's hats because my father wears them.

[on her voice in Polish in The Immigrant (2013)] Language is part of a whole. I like creating characters who have their own approach, their own body language, their own voice. Learning a language helps to build something different. I play a Polish woman in the film, so I had to speak Polish fluently, with a Polish accent. I understood that, in order to speak correctly, I had to sink into the Polish culture. I had the same experience with English and Italian. Culture enriches language and vice versa.

I've always wanted to be an actress but I never really asked myself why. I know now that I have this career for two major reasons: First, because it allows me to take such pleasure in work that I happen to be overwhelmed with happiness while acting. And second, because this job puts me the most in danger in relation to my emotional past.

[on spending a day in a wheelchair in Paris with her co-star Samuel Jouy preparing for Du bleu jusqu'en Amérique (1999)] Others looking at us, us being dependent on others - we had a unique experience. The movie is a celebration of life and hope.

[about the dream roles of actresses (1999)] I would like to be offered to play Count Dracula as a consolation for not having been in The Idiots (1998) by Lars von Trier.

More and more I love being myself, but I love this work of totally changing personalities.

[on why she became an actress - Elle, November 2013] When I was a kid, I started to have a lot of questions about human beings, and I was a troubled child because of all of these questions. I guess that's why I became an actress. Not only because my parents were actors and, yeah, it's a beautiful thing to tell stories, but I think I became an actress because I wanted to explore this- to explore what a human being is.

[on getting old and wrinkly] You know what? I'm not looking forward to it. I know that it's going to come. Some of the women around me, they tell me it's not fun to get old. But it's not about your look, it's about the fact that you cannot run like you did when you were younger, or - it's just about when your body gets tired and you don't have the hundred percent energy sometimes. So it's not something that I look forward to. But I have to say, since I'm a mum, I'm really looking forward to being a grandma. This is kind of my obsession right now. I hope my kids won't wait so long, like me, to have kids, because I want to be a very healthy and young grandma. So it's not getting old but being a grandmother ... this is really something that I look forward to.

[on why she'll never have Botox] When I have to have an injection I'm like a four-year-old, running around the room with the nurse behind me trying to catch me. So I guess I won't have Botox or whatever you put inside yourself to look younger. In France... I was at my friend's house the other day, and all those women there, they were between 50 and 70, and they were so beautiful. Sometimes in LA, or even in New York, you run into a lot of products - a lot of women filled with all those products. It's not just about plastic surgery now, it's about injections... and all the women look kind of the same. It just shows fear, and that makes me sad.

[at Elle's 20th Annual Women In Hollywood] As far back as I can remember, I began questioning the world around me. Then I realized that by exploring different human beings and their stories, I felt the connection I was longing for. I know these women have also found answers in what they do, and share my passion for discovering the human soul.

[on why she thinks so many actors succumb to alcohol and drugs] Actors are fragile creatures. The wider the gap, the more vulnerable we are. Any form of escape can seem good. You have to navigate through the different emotions because you're placed in tough positions as an actor. Everything we give in a performance can come back to torture.

[on become enthralled with the ideals of the 'American Dream'] In a certain respect, yes (I love the American dream). And I love their language. Three years before La Vie En Rose (2007), I came to New York to take an English language course with Berlitz. I didn't become an actress with the aim of having a career in the US, my dream didn't have any geographical boundaries, but just after filming Tim Burton's Big Fish (2003), I was looking forward to speaking the language fluently because my poor English from my school days was a problem on set. This love of English comes from my childhood, I grew up on American culture. Their music, cinema and literature were part of me.