When I first came to New York I was a dancer, and a French record label offered me a recording contract and I had to go to Paris to do it. So I went there and that's how I really got into the music business. But I didn't like what I was doing when I got there, so I left, and I never did a record there.
After living and working in Milan and Paris, I arrived in New York City 20 years ago, and I saw both the joys and the hardships of daily life. On July 28, 2006, I was very proud to become a citizen of the United States - the greatest privilege on planet Earth.
I went to drama school in Paris and started doing theatre with a friend. Then I moved into movies and slowly but surely I got roles.
I'd been writing poems for many years, but most of them I didn't like. Then, when I was 23, I wrote one I did like, sent it to 'The Paris Review' - the highest publication I could think of - and they accepted it. No other moment in my literary life has quite come close to that.
They are just really stupid people in Hollywood. You write them a script, and they say they love it, they absolutely love it. Then they say, 'But doesn't it need a small dog, and an Eskimo, and shouldn't it be set in New Guinea?' And you say, 'But it is a sophisticated romantic comedy set in Paris.'
I've wanted to be an actor since I was 6 years old. I was literally picked off the streets of Paris... while I was modeling there. I was asked to audition for Oliver Stone's 'Alexander.' I didn't get the part, but that led to commercials and roles in South Africa.
Born and raised in Paris, I am deeply attached to my city; we almost have half a century of love story together, where I have been truly completely faithful! The most beautiful city in the world is my city, yeepeeee!
At Ungaro, I discovered the flou and the language of Paris.
I was friends with Susan Sontag the last four years of her life. She had this amazing charisma and so much energy, but she had a sad little funeral in Montparnasse in Paris.
The public's appetite for frothy, flippant blondes has waned, but Paris Hilton still fascinates me.
A few of the influences on my career so far have been Isamu Noguchi, Irving Penn, and seeing the riots of 1968 in Paris.
I was very fortunate to grow up with parents who love to travel, so I traveled from a young age. My dad's a heart surgeon and goes to conferences all over the world. By the time I was seven, I traveled outside the country for the first time. We went to Paris. The next year, we went to London, and then Brussels.
I'd sometimes go to Paris by myself - it was an easy two-hour train ride - to get a break from the everyday grind, to walk around a big city, ride a subway, feel the energy of a world capital.
The colors I choose there was to paint the first hotel, the Disneyland Hotel. Because of the cloudy sky we had in Paris, it had to be a particular kind of color who will fight those grey days. And also something you can see when you're driving up 'There it is! We're arriving!'
I would willingly give fifty thousand crowns to be able to say that I took Paris without costing the life of one single man.
Almost every one of my various zero numbered birthdays has had a big concert in London and often in Paris.
What drives that desire to destroy Paris Hilton? What drives that desire to venerate Angelina Jolie? I do understand it, but it still baffles me. It baffles me when people treat me specially and differently, because I just want to look at them and go, 'What are you talking about? I'm just a person.'
I'll spend a couple of days in Paris, a couple back in London, some time at the factory in Italy... I like travelling, but it can be a struggle to get home for weekends.
One measure of twentieth-century time is the supersonic three and three-quarter hours it takes the Concorde to fly from New York to Paris, gate to gate. Other measures come with the waits on the expressways and the runways.
It may be no surprise that Pittsburgh has direct flights to London, Paris and Frankfurt, but consider this: many of the tourists here have come from Europe to the capital of culture in the Alleghenies.
