All these quotes were taken from several Asia interviews. Most of them were in English, but a few of them were in Italian and French, so I translated the quotes myself. Enjoy! :)
"Most people see a shrink. I get to explore my dark side through cinema and be a good girl in life."
"I'm a little bit of a freak. I have no idea why I turned out this way."
"I want Anna Lou to be proud of having me as her mother when she grows up."
"My father once told me: 'You're not an 'actress''. I think he was right. I feel like, I would like to be one of those Renaissance women: painters, singers, composers, everything all together. If I remained an actress my whole life, my creativity would die. My true ambition is to be a director."
"The perfect audience for my movies are the French: they understood me and they've always treated me very well."
"My mother is chaos and my father is order. I'm halfway between the two of them."
"My mother was an actress and on her side of the family there are composers going back to the 12th century. My great-great grandfather was a film distributor, my grandfather a producer, my grandmother a photographer, my uncle a producer, my dad a filmmaker and my sister is a costume-designer. Creativity is encouraged in my family. You can't escape it."
"I feel more comfortable when I'm working and doing things where I can come out of myself than in life."
"I'm very good cook, I have to admit. Any kind of pasta you wish I can make for you."
"I always like characters that are not one dimensional."
"Italian women are thought of as being sexy, but I'm more than just that cliché."
"I don't want to be the scary bitch from hell anymore. I don't want to be labelled the kick-ass chick either, but maybe that's more healthy that some evil hell bitch, don't you think?"
"I do boxing. Not tae kwon do or anything silly like that, just boxing."
"It's funny - in 'xXx' there were all the big, tough guys with tattoos, but they were all fake - I was the only one with real tattoos!"
"I like to feel alive, so I like intense people, intense movies, intense books, intense dinners, everything... There's nothing better than eating really good pasta and having an intense conversation."
"My teeth represent me. They are as crooked as my soul. I like them, I am oblique."
"I hated being a kid. At the time, I didn't like kids. That's why I started working. So I could be around adults."
"Since giving birth to Anna Lou my dominant mood has changed. It was very gloomy. Now, it's happy. I could almost use the word positive."
"For me, being naked in a movie is like therapy. I don't use nudity as something pretty. For me, it's something scary."
"Acting came naturally to me, but I don't think it's my biggest ambition. So many actors become vain, and self-obsessed, and uncreative - everything's about the money - and I don't want to end up like that."
"Fear is a very healthy feeling."
"I made 'Scarlet Diva' to exorcise the bad things in my life. I spoke about the horrible truth. It was a therapy, a healing process."
"From age 22 to 24, I used to be a real recluse. The only way I communicated with the world was with my website."
"I used to be the ugly one. None of the boys liked me. Then when I was 17, suddenly they did and I began to build this 'dangerous' female persona."
"I think I kissed Vin Diesel more than I kissed my last 3 boyfriends."
"To me, I'm not beautiful."
"No. I'm not comfortable in my body. I don't like being naked. It makes me feel embarrassed. I don't walk naked in the house. I'm not that kind of girl."
"There's so much I want to understand, and I don't do analysis. I don't have a psychologist. I don't have the practical chores, either. You know, my life is totally impossible and by making a movie about it maybe I can forgive myself."
"It's strange, because when I see my father's movies, I see the women in his movies before I was even born - they all look like me! That's why I think that maybe he gave me birth, to have a lead in his movies."
"As somebody who did everything, but didn't know how to do anything." - On how she would like to be remembered.
"For me, the Internet is the best way of communicating. Since I am a little agoraphobic, I like being alone in my apartment - and still being surrounded by everybody."
"I don't think there is much difference between life and work. Is that why I'm unable to live? I don't do much when I'm not working. I'm at my best when I can be creative."
"Sometimes I think my father gave me life because he needed a lead actress for his films."
"What's dangerous to me is not being in control."
"My father always told me to be humble, that nothing ever lasts, to always remember that some day you are going to die."
"I'm afraid of grasshoppers. It has to do with my being a control freak. Grasshoppers are really hard to control."
"I can change myself, and I do, but not to please a guy - for an urge, a necessity, growing, knowledge."
"I'm not the loneliest girl in the world anymore. I'm never lonely if I have my little daughter with me. But before her, yes, I was very lonely. Since I was little it was always like that, even if I was surrounded by people."
"It's weird because all my life I've written out of deep sadness and misery and now that I'm very close to happiness, it's more difficult."
"I hope I never lose the hunger to do something new, something that makes me grow - this is why I had to direct: I felt there was nothing else that I really wanted to accomplish through acting. And now, since I made my movie, I'm enjoying acting more. I've become a much more humble actress."
"I was sick for a while; I was agoraphobic. I was afraid to go out of my apartment for a long time, I could only go out to work. But I was not lonely. I was alone. It was my choice - well, I had no other choice. But now I have a love for the first time in my life, and that makes me feel a little less lonely, even though there are some things I know I could never share with anybody."
"Sure. And I did this film ('Scarlet Diva') to be loved by this person, who never read the script, who has never seen this film. And we’re not together anymore - as soon as the film was over, the need for that impossible love was over. When you’re alone and you fantasize about love, it’s the purest form of love. The person needs to be either dead or unattainable, because the other person’s love is going to ruin your love. But now I believe differently, so maybe this film has cured me, or saved me somehow." - Answering if she has ever had an "impossible love" in real life.
"Like Brando said, acting - not prostitution - is the oldest profession in the world."
"I care only about that. Almost only about cinema."
"I hate elevating acting to something it's not, like a lot of Americans do. There's no mystery - it's only a job like everything else."
"There is no balance between those who hate me and those who love me. The first ones are numerous, the second ones are a minority."
"I'm not very ambitious, I don't play for posterity. I don't care about performing Juliet, Ophelia or Joan Of Arc, I just want to be part of interesting projects. I don't make any plans for my career."
"When I was born, to celebrate me, my parents had 'Gone With The Wind' projected on the walls for three days."
"I'm honestly not pursuing global stardom as such. I just want to have the choice of the best scripts out there."
"You know, everyone thinks I'm this strong character, and I like playing people with strong personalities. Why everyone sees this resilient, dark side to me is a mystery. I thought it had a lot to do with the Argento horror association at first, but now I've realized people must see this force in me that I can't, or dare not, recognize."
"I want to make as many beautiful movies as possible, and I will always follow my heart when I make my choices."
"I think it's more fun to play the crazy, bad girl. It's also easier than playing a sane character - some sort of bourgeois office girl wouldn't fit my face. I think it would be a great challenge for me to play the stupid, plain little girl."
"He gave me a taste for beauty, and some aesthetics, and that's definitely there and I'm proud of it. But at the same time, I have a completely different style as a filmmaker from my father, who's very classic and really knows the old machine of cinema. And I'm more into a new way of filmmaking - very light, very free, very detached from the rules to destroy the rules. But it comes definitely from a sense of beauty and some aesthetics that are in my blood."
Fame stinks when... "It allows you to become lazy and lose your smile. I've seen many famous people become fake and lose their smiles. That's scary."
I indulge in... "Vanity. Not clothes but beauty products. It's my mother's fault: She was a stage actress and she had this enormous closet of makeup. As I grew up, I started buying my own."
"I haven’t been avoiding the blockbusters, maybe they’ve been avoiding me."
"In Italy, first you do something and then you talk about it. I don’t like these people that just sit at parties with champagne in their hands saying 'Oh, I'm going to do this movie...' and then they never do it because it's bad luck and they don’t know the trick: never talk about your projects."
"I'm very shy and that’s my nature which is why I had to build this fortress, or maybe it's not a fortress."
"In the past, I used to be very aggressive to see what it would lead to and what I could bring out of people by saying outrageous, controversial things just to see their reaction. I was testing my limits and the audiences' limits and now I don’t have that fantasy anymore, I don’t have that urge anymore, it doesn't give me anything to do that. In the past, I was more rebellious - been there, done that."
"I can name hundreds of directors that I admire in America, but I don’t want to work with them. Whenever you work with your heroes, they will not be your heroes after the movie is done. I'd rather have them as my heroes."
"I don’t do movies for what they will 'do', but because I love them and when you put too many expectations onto something like I did in the past, it never works."
"Sometimes people think I'm a (lousy) actress and I agree with people when they say that. The only thing I do well is I don't lie. I believe what I do - and you can see it in my eyes."
"In Europe, (the media has) been quite nasty about my private life and nosy and sometimes it hurts, but you learn to live with that."
"I don't know if I was destined to work in films. It sounds kind of sad to put it that way. Life, DNA, destiny, fortune... My sister Fiore doesn't work in films, she's a shoe designer. Was she destined to be that? Sometimes I wonder what would have happened to me if I was the daughter of two plumbers. Would I be one too?"
"Some actors, some very stupid actors, believe that the uglier they look, the better they are as an actor. I used to believe in that, too."
"Coming to America is like starting over, which is great. But I don't want to end up like so many European actors who tried to make it in the United States and it didn't work."
"I never wanted to be an actress. I always wanted to be a writer. But I'm not Dostoievsky, y' know? So that's why I'm an actress."
"I was a child actor, but I was a strange-looking kid. In Italy, they call it 'the beauty of the donkey'."
"The basic thing is that maybe my pattern is the truth. I have this obsession with this. So I look for the truth even in the biggest lies."
"The true uglyness of my perception of myself is not physical. It's deeper than that."
"Music is a big passion, almost bigger than cinema."
"Motherhood gave me a big creative energy, but most of all a reason for what I do, a bigger reason than just personal reward."
"I never had dreams that something incredible was going to come and change my life."
"I hope not. I would like her to become a pianist, like her father." - Answering if she would like Anna Lou to become an actress.
"In a way I chose the easiest thing to do because my family’s been doing this since my great grandfather who was a film distributor in Brazil. My grandmother was a photographer, and then my grandfather was a producer and my uncle is a producer and my mother’s an actress, so I just continued the family business."
"Fellini is my favourite Italian director and the reason why I adore his work is that when you watch his movies it’s real, because most of the time you’re talking about his life, but he would change the reality. It was a reality that you had to accept. It wasn’t a real reality, it was a world you had to plunge into and accept."
"My goal, or what makes me happy in life is directing, and that’s something I found out in doing - or actually before doing - 'Scarlet Diva'."
"I try to explore every possible way to communicate since I have a serious problem with communication, with people and life. I’m very solitary and very alone, so that’s the only way for me to pretend I’m communicating to people. You know, whatever, writing or doing acting or directing, photography or singing, all these million things I do, it’s just for the impossibility of communication."
"I'm like my father. I know what I want and I get bored easily."
"I wrote 'Scarlet Diva' to save myself from death. I knew that if I didn't write it, I would die creatively. I was obsessed and all I wanted to do was write this movie..."
"Directing has given me back my self-esteem and confidence. When I was just acting, I'd go home, unhappy and unable to focus on anything positive."
"I was asked to be the female lead in "Wild Wild West' opposite Will Smith, but the script was so full of misogyny that I refused."
"Friends have said my father's films gave them nightmares, but not me: I find them beautiful and painful."
"I always hate it when directors say they had a good time making a movie. Fuck, you're not supposed to have a good time. Shooting a film is like war. You and the others are just out there in the trenchers, fighting for the same thing."
"My ambition is to do whatever I choose to do well, and not embarrass myself!"
"Strong women roles are all I'm offered. I don't aspire to weak females."
