Jean Dujardin

I guess we're all lucky to be in this profession where you can be someone else for two or three months on a film shoot. I find it restful. Vachement agreable.

For you, it's a silent movie. For us, it's a talking movie because we had lines on set. There's a lot of noise on set and music. We spoke in English, in French, in gibberish, but it was very alive. The challenge was tap dancing.

I like simple things. I like being in my family in the South and playing petanque.

I'm not an American actor. I'm a French actor. I'll continue in France. If I could make another silent movie in America, I'd like to!

I discovered that silent film is almost an advantage. You just have to think of the feeling for it to show. No lines pollute it. It doesn't take much - a gaze, an eyelash flutter - for the emotion to be vivid.

I think I'm more demanding than any wife.

I'm happiest on set because I'm not myself. I'm someone else. The moustache, the dinner jacket. It's not me. You're always this sort of double, and it's liberating. Imagine being stuck with yourself... all those doubts.

It's quite pretentious, really, isn't it? The notion the audience is going to be interested in you for an hour and a half. Think too much about that and anxiety takes over.

I love dancing in general and making girls dance. My generation doesn't do it enough.

I like the hot-cold, the sugar-salt, being able to play over-the-top and dramatic things - in the same film. Just as in my life, I can be very funny and at other times almost extinguished.

I don't really know Hollywood, but living and shooting in L.A. was very motivating, inspiring. The lights, the extras, their American faces, the energy, the Orpheum Theatre. It was all very inspiring.

I can't speak American dog very well. There was a lot of improvisation with Uggie - like when I put the dog on the table or sometimes I follow him, sometimes he follows me. I had a lot of treats in my pocket. We worked with Omar Von Muller, the dog trainer. It was very easy because it was a big movie.