I don’t know why people keep banging on about the ’60s. I came from a conventional family and I didn’t go off with different people – I rather wish I had now, seeing all the fun everyone else was having. – Jane Birkin
I feel most comfortable in an old pair of jeans, Converse, and a man’s jersey. My best friend cuts my hair with kitchen scissors. – Jane Birkin
Any film I see at two o’clock in afternoon with my mother seems to cast a strange spell that means we both come out sobbing. – Jane Birkin
It’s usually a jolly good trick to pick up a local tour guide. They can tell you all the anecdotes that make a place interesting. I’m one for rushing off to museums at the crack of dawn, eating fabulous things on terraces for lunch, and enjoying long dinners on balmy evenings. – Jane Birkin
I don’t like getting older, but there’s nothing I can do. Hitting 60 wasn’t great, but I think I was lucky in not being that beautiful; it can be really cruel on people who have been stunning. – Jane Birkin
I grind my teeth and keep my thumbs in so tight that I’ve dislocated them, just not to scream. Sometimes as an actor one is lucky enough to be asked to scream. – Jane Birkin
My distinguishing feature is the gap between my teeth. I had to wear a brace because my teeth used to stick out like guns from a fortress. – Jane Birkin
If I were mayor, I’d invite everyone to have free boat trips on the river and free balloon rides over the city. I’d let the elderly in residential homes wander free. – Jane Birkin
I colour my hair mousy brown and I wear makeup only on stage. I use Laura Mercier – something called Biscuit, I think. I run one tiny sponge over my face and cover the red blotches. If I’ve got some rouge, I’ll bung it on my mouth and cheeks. – Jane Birkin
Robert Louis Stevenson… I’m focusing on the late short stories that I was ignorant of. I always thought he was a boys’ author, but he’s not at all. – Jane Birkin
My father was a painter, so I was encouraged to take a sketchbook everywhere. Cameras are perishable, but I still have tonnes of sketchbooks from all the trips I’ve ever been on. It gets you by when you don’t know what to give people as a gift; drawings are good souvenirs. – Jane Birkin
David Attenborough… has that wonderful, breathy voice, and he’s always so fascinated by what he’s seeing. There’s nothing about him that I can’t find attractive. – Jane Birkin
When I was at school I used to scream in trains, in those concertina things between the carriages. I used to try to be so good that sometimes I couldn’t bear it any more. – Jane Birkin
I know what it’s like to have someone coming home who looks at you not in the way they used to in the old days, and I’ve seen my own face contorted with sadness and rage in the mirror. – Jane Birkin
My mother was right: When you’ve got nothing left, all you can do is get into silk underwear and start reading Proust. – Jane Birkin
He painted me when I was young because he was in love with me, but now that he has loved me he doesn’t paint me anymore. – Jane Birkin
I love Dickens because it makes me chuckle to myself so. He has taken me to another world and out of so many earthly miseries. – Jane Birkin
Nothing has ever touched on what fun childhood was. Summer holidays were bliss. We made home movies, with real stories in them. My father had such charm and charisma, and made everything so funny. – Jane Birkin
When my father died, my mother came back from being Mrs. Birkin to being Judy Campbell. She was a stunning actress. She came out of her shell. She was herself again: this very independent, funny, intellectual lady – and was able to perform again, which was her life before meeting my father squashed it out. – Jane Birkin
