 Geraldine Chaplin shortly after her arrival in Trencianske Teplice |
As an eight-year-old, you made your debut in the Limelight along with your mother, sister, and your brother. You have been making many of your films with your partners. Do you then look at film as a sort of family affair?
I like it to be that way. I'm proud to say that it's always the films that have come first and afterwards developed the relationship. I'm really proud that a lot of directors have asked me to work with them again: Robert Altman, Alain Resnais, Carlos Saura, with Saura then it turned into a different relationship too. I think for an actor it's really important to get along with the director.
Richard Attenborough let you play your own grandmother in the film Chaplin. She must have been an interesting woman and it certainly was a big challenge to play the mother of your father.
It was a very good part. I considered that I was really lucky to get that. Attenborough phoned me up and said "would you like to?" And I said 'yes.' I didn't really realize that I was acting my grandmother. I realized that it was my grandmother when I saw the film and said 'Oh, my god, that poor woman.' I never met her. So it was really just the written word. She died long before I was born.
You live alternately in Spain and Switzerland. Could we perhaps say that the character of these two countries express your temperament?
If you make films, you're changing rhythm the whole time. You go from a quiet life to an absolutely turbulent life which is typical of moviemaking. And then you get back to your normal life and you have to have nerves of steel. I have that also with the two countries that I live in. I live in Spain and then I can't stand it any more so I go to Switzerland. Then I can't stand it any more and I go to Spain. So it's the change of rhythm which I think is what keeps me alive. In Spain I hear so much noise from my window that can't stand it. In Switzerland it's the lack of noise that drives me crazy.
In one interview you said: "I didn't fall in love with acting until I did a few films. Now, I couldn't live without it." What is your next role is going to be and in what film? We just read on the internet that you may be making a film with Mick Jagger.
Mick Jagger was going to play a part in the film and then he didn't. I finished that film in January. It was a huge film for television called the Odyssey, and it was directed by Andrei Konchalovsky. Now, I've just come back from Sri Lanka where I was playing Mother Theresa of Calcutta.
What are you going to do next?
I'm waiting by the telephone.