Julie Delpy: "It’s used to be a big handicap to be a pretty woman"

I think the early films I fell in love with as a kid were like, you know, Hair, the Miloš Forman film. West Side Story, I think, is one of the first films I remember. Then there was also Star Wars. There was a lot of films. Then eventually my dad started bringing me to the Cinemathèque. There was Fanny and Alexander. There was Tess. There was, you know, also Woody Allen. Then there was all sorts of films that I was exposed to as a child, and also a lot of theater. My parents were theater actors, so I would go see every play you can think of I've seen. You know, from Edda Gabler to the Shakespeare play to French plays to more modern stuff like Copie or Arabale or all sorts of artists. So yeah, Godard was one of my dad's favorite filmmakers, so I had seen most of his films when I was 14. I had already started auditioning for other people, but it didn't go very well. People were not very nice to me. They thought I was not, you know, I looked too romantic for the times, you know. And so when I met Godard, he really liked me, and he hired me right away. I told him, I was like, it's okay if you don't hire me. Let me at least, you know, but I'd love to see how you work, so you don't have to hire me if you let me come to set and see how it works. And then he's like, no, I'll hire you. Like this, you get paid and you get to come to set. And for me, it was great. I was escaping school also, which I hated, and hated, hated school. It was very difficult for me. I had friends, but the system of fitting in was difficult for me in school with the parents that I had was not easy. So it was a wonderful way to start with Jean-Luc Godard because he was a very, I was, I had, I was very big, big fan of his work. Yeah. I worked with Kieslowski. Before that, I worked with Anieszka Holland. I worked with Carlo Saura. I worked with Kieslowski. I worked with Volker Schlondorff before I worked with Kieslowski, or did I work with Kieslowski before Schlondorff? I can't remember. One or the other. It was very close. No, maybe Schlondorff. And so, yeah, it was great to work with him. He was really very fun, very smart. I loved his views on cinema, and I loved his films. Of course, I had seen the Decalogue and his early films, Camera Buff, and also Chain of Chances, or the one with the train, Missing the Train. So they were also very political films, and I loved his view. And to get to spend some time in Poland at the time was really interesting as well. So it was all a very interesting experience. I mean, I was very lucky to work with such wonderful directors. I have no idea what your situation is, but I feel like we have some kind of a connection, right? Yeah, me too. Great. So listen, here's the deal. This is what we should do. You should get off the train with me here in Vienna and come check out the town. We just got into Vienna today, and we're looking for something fun to do. So practice English? Yeah, why's that? Because we speak German for a change. Now I'm going to call my best friend in Paris, who I'm supposed to have lunch with. I think it's great we did those films. I think it was a really beautiful experience for the three of us to work on this, and to explore a relationship throughout 30 years, or 25 years, or whatever, 20 years, yeah, 20 years, was really, really interesting. And we really, you know, a lot of my ideas about romance and love is in the film, of my personal ideas about it, especially the first one, the first film, and the second one as well, and also the third one into the difficulties of, you know, being in a relationship for a long time. And yeah, so I think it's a very, those are very personal films. You know, it's funny. I found a journal that I wrote when I was 18, and half of, I mean, almost all I say in the first film is from my journal from when I was 18, 19, 20. You know, so it's all my romance from when I was a younger woman, and it's sweet to think that I put all that in the film, and it's there now for a long time. Not maybe forever, because, you know, that's a bit pretentious to say, but at least for the next few years that, you know, people still watch movies and watch those films. You know, it just would, sometimes, it all depends. Sometimes I would say some lines or write them on paper. The first film we, you know, we had a computer, but it wasn't as, you know, usual to have computers, so a lot of it is handwritten on the original screenplay, which we pretty much, you know, we kept the structure and everything else we rewrote. And then, yeah, just like, you know, it was an interesting experience to, you know, explore kind of those parallel characters. It's almost like Céline is a little bit of me. I mean, a lot of me. It's 90% me, but it's, I'm not completely Céline because I have another side to me that I don't put in those films, you know, which is the creative, you know, writer, director, and, you know, she's me and she's not me, you know, kind of. She's part of me. At least she has some ideas that are me, even though I have more. There's more to me than Céline, but every word she says are mine, basically. So, you know, even though she's different from me, she's written by me, so there's something to it that, you know, feels very strange to have this character being partly me. Now I think of myself more as a writer-director than I think of myself as an actress. I do act. I just did a show and I do act in my films, so I do act and I'd love to work with good directors as an actress. It's a very nice feeling when you can trust someone and you love their films and you get to work with them. It hasn't happened to me always, you know, but I'm hoping it's going to happen again. You never know. Or maybe I'll just stop acting, you know. That's also a possibility, which is okay, too, you know. No, I said no to big, successful films. It happened to me, but in the end, maybe it was good because it allowed me to work on my own stuff, on writing. And maybe I said no to those films, but in a way, it allowed me to maybe not have the same success as I could have had, but in a way, it made me work on myself and work on my own stuff, you know. Because when you become a star, you kind of feel content, maybe, being just that. And maybe the fact that I was not… But maybe I chose not to do those films because I wanted something else and I've always wanted… I mean, I went to film school in New York, so I wanted to be a director. And it wasn't an easy time for women, necessarily. There were other women directors, but they weren't pretty actresses, you know. Being a pretty actress was a big handicap, being pretty especially, because people didn't take me seriously. It's different now, but, you know, it used to be a big handicap to be a pretty woman. As soon as the Russians invaded Ukraine, the whole village mobilized. It's true that the Ukrainians suffered a lot. I voted for them to be welcomed. Hervé Rioux, adopted unanimously. I took care of all the administrative for the arrival of the refugees. Excuse me, I have to talk to you. There were so many requests for Ukrainian refugees, well, there are no more. In fact, they are Syrians. Syrians coming from Ukraine. Well, it's a comedy on a serious subject matter, which is refugees and how they are welcome or not so welcome in a village in France. It's a comedy because it's a subject matter that really breaks my heart in a way, and I couldn't deal with it. And there's been beautiful films made about the subject that are serious films. And I was like, I want to approach it in a more funny but critical kind of making fun of people with preconceived ideas. But I make fun of the people that are a bit racist, but I also make fun of the people that are too welcoming also, you know, so it's kind of like a mix of making fun of it's making fun a little bit about French people and how, you know, how they can be with their good and bad side, you know.