Love Quote by Jacqueline Bisset

Bisset frames filmmaking less as a glamorous career than as a compulsion with a pulse. The first clause, "intense obsession", sounds like tabloid language, but she uses it deliberately to strip away the polite version of artistic ambition. "Obsession" suggests repetition, restlessness, the inability to stop. It also quietly rejects the idea that actors are just hired faces: she positions herself as someone who lives inside the work, not adjacent to it.

The pivot from "love" to "need" is the tell. Love is optional, even fashionable; need is bodily, a demand. In an industry that routinely treats actresses as replaceable and age as a deadline, "need" becomes a survival argument. She's not asking permission to keep working or to be taken seriously; she's asserting that the work is structurally tied to her identity. That word "perhaps" matters, too. It's a small hedge that keeps the statement from sounding self-mythologizing, letting vulnerability do the heavy lifting. She admits dependence without romanticizing it.

Contextually, Bisset came up in a period when female performers were celebrated for aura and punished for appetite - especially creative appetite. Claiming an "obsession" with making films is a subtle act of control: it shifts the narrative from being chosen to choosing, from being watched to building something worth watching. It's not motivational. It's honest about the cost: if you need the work, the work can also own you.