A Quote by Leila Slimani
I don't really consider myself an immigrant, because I was born French; I have always spoken the language. I never had the feeling of being a foreigner. I was very lucky: I came to France, and I had enough money to study and to rent a studio. So, for me, it was not difficult.
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I'm living in a dream. I really consider myself really lucky. I was born and raised in Guatemala, in a village, where to go to the market you have to take two buses or drive about 20 minutes if you are lucky enough to have a car. I grew up very, very poor and I didn't even know that being an actor could be a career.
I consider myself a 'local' actor in France. I started out in France, I went to drama school in France and the French film community was very welcoming to me when I was a young actress.
The country that I was coming from, the island I was in, hadn't been written about, really. So I thought that I virtually had it all to myself, including the language that was spoken there, which was a French Creole, and a landscape that is not recorded, really, and the people.
My interest, perhaps, came out of the trauma of being a young immigrant in this country and constantly feeling my "resident alien" status. I remember trying to learn English on kindergarten playgrounds. I tried hard to be a convincing American but it was a losing battle. I was labeled weird and that tag never left me - all through high school, I was always the oddball. It was not always an easy path - I just had to tell myself that one day, being on the periphery would become an asset (and I think it finally has, as a creative adult).
I kinda came into my manhood, or what I thought was my adulthood, early. I had to show up, and I had to make sure I had gas money, food money, rent money, clothes money - everything was on me, startin' at that age, so that's what led me to start hustlin', that's what led me to start to try to find ways to fend for myself. And once I did that, I was full-time, bein' in the street, and, bein' in the street, it's cold. It's the way the streets operate, and you have to adapt to that.
I have been very lucky because I have had the opportunity to see what it's like to have little or no money and what it's like to have a lot of it. I'm lucky because people make such a big deal of it and, if I didn't experience both, I wouldn't be able to know how important it really is for me. I can't comment on what having a lot of money means to others, but I do know that for me, having a lot more money isn't a lot better than having enough to cover the basics.
I'd been influenced by reading books on art and colonies that existed in Paris and places like that and so when I came to Europe I came to France and I had very little money, and I had to live low and stayed in a bohemian section of Paris with a lot of other students, who were from medical school, science school and art school. We all lived in a kind of communal way and I was challenged politically, because I didn't have a clue and they would ask me questions about the Algerian War, which was very big in France in the late '50s.
I started writing songs by myself. That always came from whatever I was feeling and being honest about that because I never had any intention of anyone ever hearing them.
On of the reasons that I wanted to study literature was because it exposed everything. Writers looked for secrets that had never been mined. Every writer has to invent their own magical language, in order to describe the indescribable. They might seem to be writing in French, English, or Spanish, but really they were writing in the language of butterflies, crows, and hanged men.
I never learned to study in studio school, so I had to teach myself to study.
I consider myself lucky because I've had the possibility in life to do the one thing closest to my heart: playing football. I've also been lucky enough to win prestigious trophies like two Champions Leagues and other competitions with Milan.
I've had days here and there where I would get discouraged because I wasn't a big star, but I've made a living ever since I was 27. Not a great living, but enough for me. I think actually being able to pay my rent and eat and perform is enough, and I did that for many years. Then I had some good years in there, too, where I made pretty good money.
I taught a master class in film in France, and that was a great experience because I got a chance to study the French film culture and the French film history, so to add... just to expand myself just personally and professionally was really helpful.
My algebra was relatively poor. I found it very difficult to use equations that substituted numbers - to which I had a synesthetic and emotional response - for letters, to which I had none. It was because of this that I decided not to continue math at Advanced level, but chose to study history, French and German instead.
I was uncomfortable because I had never been that nude before. I had never shown my legs, and never shown quite that much skin. I always played frigid doctors or the plain sisters who got the guy at the end. What did I know from ladies in caves who ate only meat? And when the outfit came in, I never thought of myself that way. I mean, I always thought of myself as having my father's chest. I was very self-conscious.
I have had wonderful times and educated two children with my husband, and I just consider myself very lucky. I've had a very interesting career - I've been all over the world. I lucked out; I think you can say that: I really lucked out.
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