Studio - Exactly. One could have thought that after a career such as yours, this past year wouldn't have come as a shock... 
 
Gérard Depardieu - No, because it is very different. I was not prepared for it. It is one thing to have a French or European dimension and to make the movies that cross the Atlantic. I have about thirty [films] that went to America. It is another thing to make a movie in English language like "Green Card". As it is an American movie, when it comes out, you take a tour all over the world, and everywhere, you meet the types who give all they've got for the movie, and that have incredible budgets, to receive you, to make the film a big event. Even a success like "Cyrano", there was nothing new to see... It was a phenomena of the same kind as "The Last Metro", "Danton", "Martin Guerre" or "Jean of Florette" -- the kind that carry with them in the world a French movie identity, that "French touch"...

"Cyrano" was the apotheosis of this phenomenon. But it remained a French movie. "Cyrano" has some 3 millions dollars of sales in the United States, it had five nominations at the Oscar, which has never been done by a French movie, but that still is nothing compared with "Green Card". Three months after the release, it has some 25 millions dollars of ticket-sales in the United States, it is going to finish at 35, and all over the world, in Australia, in England, in the Scandinavian countries, it's the same. It is not a beast of the box-office like "Home Alone". It is a movie that cost 10 million dollars, and that is going to pass 100 or 120 million in sales world wide... 

And then, the Americans take me solely for what I am, and that is, someone who makes a funny effect. The very French movies like the comedies of Francis Veber, or like the one that I am going to begin filming with Lauzier, "My father, the hero", they want to make them with me, over there [in America]. For example, they want that I redo with them the movie of Lauzier. Instead of being married to a French woman, I would be married to an American, with a child raised in America, for the Americans... 
 
I am not quite adapted to this kind of approach... I have experience, now, with more than 70 movies, with many different producers, but these were almost always what we call some 'auteurs'. I've worked little with producers who make movies, as they say, "on demand". Peter Weir also writes his own stories. He is not part of the Hollywood machine... Over there, they would be able to send me for six months to school, to learn the language better, and to build me up - that has been spoken of -- a kind of Schwarzenegger but without muscles, a Schwarzenegger that eats meat, smoke some cigarettes, etc! They look at me like a monster, because they are stuck on the issues of weight, of diet, of cigarettes... Me also, I go on some diets, but I don't take it so seriously...

So, good, all that, it is very interesting, but I don't believe it is that which interests me [in the long term]. Because what interests me above all is not success, but the meetings [with other people]. If I adopted an approach solely aimed toward public success, I would stop growing, because it is not that which, deeply, interests me. I don't want to be what they call a "movie star", nor a star. I want to continue to be able to grow, I want to be simply human, and the best way to be human is to encourage the meetings, to continue these exercises... But with a success like that, that becomes difficult, time passes very quickly, one loses contact, one doesn't know anymore where people are. It's a good thing I have my other life, my life as a farmer, close to the earth. There, one cannot lie. When it rains, and you are in a field of mud, it becomes quickly the shit, and if you want to try to dive a hundred meters to get under shelter, you're stuck, you can't move! 

Studio - From the outside, one gets the impression that your life was always like that, jostled, full. And that never stopped you from multiplying or prolonging the meetings... 
 
Gérard Depardieu - It is true. But I could move quickly, because I was in world I knew. To move quickly in a culture and a language different from your own, that is difficult... I don't want to be taken by surprise, I don't want to led by the nose, in this universe that is the Hollywood movies... When I make movies, I prefer the privilege of having the meetings [with the filmmakers], of [working with] the scripts. Scripts must be thought about, digested, and only afterwards, can one go there... What anguishes me the most currently, it is the lack of time to really meet with people... Why is "Green Card" such a good film? Because it took two years to make, so one expected it... Over there, I have the impression that I can't breathe, I have the impression that my meter is always in the red, that I am permanently on some diet. Me, I can support the diet, it is not a problem, but it is a pity, because I don't want that... 

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(interview cont'd)