Is it true that you had a conversation with Audrey Hepburn about playing Coco Chanel?



Audrey and I talked about many things. I tried to teach her how to cuss. It didn’t work. She tried to teach me how to dress. It didn’t work. When we were making the movie "The Children’s Hour," she and I talked a lot about fashion designers because I didn’t know much about fashion. She told me that I should play Coco Chanel. I disagreed because Chanel was little and scrunched-over and very short. And she said, "No, the spirit of the woman matches your spirit." I found Coco to be everything between generous and rude. I didn’t know what Audrey meant [about matching spirits]. But it turns out she was right.

How do Coco Chanel’s style and her clothes compare to your own?



Do you mean the suits and hats and the pearls, et cetera? I couldn’t wear that stuff during the day. I don’t have that kind of lifestyle, but her clothes were meant more to express her personality. Remember, she was an orphan. She was poverty-stricken. She was always afraid that it would happen to her again, and her need to stay a woman in charge is what was behind these clothes.

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Did you ever wear Coco Chanel clothes?



I was wearing her clothes, all knockoffs I might add, in my twenties and thirties because they really worked then. Not so much now. Now my personal taste runs more to plain, simple lines.


Did you ever meet Coco Chanel?



Someone looked on the Internet and found a picture of me at a Chanel collection. I was in my twenties or thirties, but I don’t remember having been there. I could have met her. It seems to me, if I had met her, I would have remembered it.

What is it about her personality that drew you to the role?



Her contradictions. Her colorful rudeness. Her sense that everything was about her talent and her goodness. She could improvise a new outfit in 10 seconds. I loved that. And I loved her conflict between love and ambition, as well as her conflict between how to get things done and not being hurtful.

Do you see similarities between your life and Coco Chanel’s?



I think we’re both colorful. I think we’re both rude. I think we’re both spontaneous. We both can’t hold back what we feel to be our honest opinion. And I think we both have talent.

Chanel did so much to change the way the world thought of women designers. Do you think that you had the same kind of impact in the acting world?



I don’t think I changed much with my [acting] work, really. I think I did change it with my books. I think they made a difference in people’s psychology and philosophy.