INTERVIEW: Udo Kier
by Steve Dollar 
German actor
Udo Kier has worked for the most idiosyncratic auteurs dead or alive?
Andy Warhol,
Rainer Werner Fassbinder,
Lars Von Trier,
Guy Maddin,
E. Elias Merhige,
Dario Argento,
Gus Van Sant and
Werner Herzog among others?and he's also co-starred with Pamela Anderson in
Barb Wire. He's the single degree of separation between extreme European art cinema and Hollywood popcorn overdrive, it seems, and even in his mid-60s, he's having trouble slowing down. "I made seven films in the last year," he said recently, chatting during a visit to Montreal's
Fantasia Festival, where he was promoting a small but pivotal performance in the new horror anthology
The Theatre Bizarre (itself pitched between sly European sensibilities and low-budget grindhouse mayhem). Besides projects with Maddin, a Bela Bartok biopic and the role of a Nazi leader on the moon in
Iron Sky, he has a small role in Von Trier's forthcoming
Melancholia, and was onstage at the Cannes press conference where the director caused a ruckus by declaring himself a Nazi.
"He is not a Nazi," Kier said, "That was a misunderstanding. What he wanted to say?he told a story that he was brought up Jewish, and his mother told him before she died that his father was named Hartmann. So he said, 'I'm German. I'm a Nazi.' Which was against the Germans, because he said actually all the Germans are Nazis."
The actor was ready to take a break, but the phone keeps ringing. He was looking forward to returning to his five-acre ranch in Palm Springs. "Now I have the happiest moments there by myself when I give water to the trees. I have 41 palm trees. It's so beautiful to stand there and smell how happy those trees are."
Over coffee in a hotel lobby, Kier reflected on his career and some of the notorious characters he's known over the last 50 years.
So you met Fassbinder when you were both teenagers? I am born in Cologne, and raised, and of course that was one of the cities that was bombed most during the war. Saturdays I got always two dollars and I was living on the outskirts. I went to the center of Cologne and there was a very interesting bar, which had a really great mixture of truck drivers, secretaries and transvestites. And there I met him. He went to school. His aunt was from Cologne, he didn't live in Cologne. It wasn't a good time. Time in the bar, yes, but in Germany in general it wasn't a good time. We met always on the weekends.
Later, I went to school in London to learn English. I had never been to acting school. My goal was to get out of Germany. My idea was to learn a lot of languages and then work for a big concern like Bayer aspirin and travel the world. I went to London, and then I opened a Stern magazine and there was a double page of his big face [and a headline]: "The Genius and the Alcoholic." That's Rainer. Wow. I was discovered in England for my first film that came to me, which was called
Road to St. Tropez, a short film where I played a gigolo. I had no knowledge about film or cameras or anything. They were very kind to me. They shot all my close-ups from very far away. All I did was look for the camera. But I didn't know I was in Cinemascope, only my face on screen.
So I went to Munich, tried to find Fassbinder, and found him. He said, "Through you when I saw you I didn't want to be reminded of my time in Cologne because it wasn?t a good time for me." And then he offered me a role in
Fox and His Friends. And I said no because I didn't like the subject. I made a film, the next one with him, called
Bolweiser (
The Stationmaster's Wife), a story about a woman with three men and I am getting her at the end. Then we start working together, living together and working, I learned a lot.
It wasn't always easy. That one point 1980?we did
Lili Marleen. He hated it because it was the second-most expensive film in Germany, so he said "Let's make a small film." We made a small film with Barbara Sukowa. And it was much better.
Lola was much better. 10 million marks, then it was a lot. The thing was then it became much more difficult, so I took my distance, on
Lola I did the sets, the first and last time I did it. I realized how much work it is, but I learned from that as an actor to respect also the sets that somebody worked so hard on.
It was an interesting time. In Germany they all started.
Wenders,
Kluge, Herzog, Fassbinder. You could never work with another director because you would have been a spy. If I had worked with Wim Wenders then Fassbinder would have said, "So tell me, how does he direct?" He had
Bruno Ganz. Herzog had
Klaus Kinski. Everybody had their own group of actors which was really wonderful.
Fassbinder is celebrated for the amazing group of actors he gathered around him. Yeah, but he was very loyal. See, I like that. And now with Lars von Trier, I did almost, since 22 years, every movie. I started with the lead in
Medea. Sometimes my role is very small. Well, he's a friend. It doesn't matter. I am part of it. It's like going to Denmark, having dinner and then he says, "By the way you're in the film." I worked later, I did two films with Werner Herzog, recently I did
My Son, My Son What Have Ye Done?, and with Wim Wenders in America I did
The End of Violence. But I think of all the directors, Fassbinder was a very interesting director because he really reflected Germany after the war.
Lars von Trier likes Fassbinder and, of course, he likes Tarkovsky, too. There are some directors who are great with directing women. Look at Fassbinder's films. They are all suffering. Looks at Lars' film, Emily Watson in
Breaking the Waves, Bjork, Nicole Kidman, they are all suffering because I think [these directors] can transfer their inner fear and anxiety much better into a woman, they cannot do it into a man. The men are just figures. But even in
Breaking the Waves, it's all about her, how she suffers.
I try to work with Gus Van Sant. I worked twice. And I am very grateful to him. I am an American through him. When he casted me in
My Own Private Idaho in Berlin when we met, he said "I'm doing a film with Keanu Reeves and River Phoenix." I said I've never heard of them. And then my friend said, "Are you crazy? They are teenage idols." He got me my Social Security number and I came to America to do the film. I slept on the couch of a girlfriend's house and I had already packed my suitcase to go back to old Germany. She said why don't you stay here? Get a cheap car, get a little apartment and try to work here? I said no. Then one more glass of red wine, and I said, "Actually not a bad idea." I stayed. I got a Volkswagen, a red car, and a little apartment.
In Hollywood? No, no, no, no. I hate that word. Always in Los Angeles. Hollywood is like, when you say Hollywood, people think you
go on the train with Arnold Schwarzenegger. I learned how to do this. I had never done auditions in my whole life. I learned the whole thing which was very depressing. And now I don't do it anymore. I learned to audition and then I got films like
Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, which I liked very much.
Jim Carrey, it was one of his first films and I couldn't believe how lively someone could be. I always say I am fascinated by Hollywood because the light is stronger and the shadows are longer. A lot of stars, I call them trailer stars, because they lose all their energy in the trailer, to complain. Looking back now, I'm 67 soon, I know it. And just to know it, just to know how it works. It's easier to work, it's an industry, like making refrigerators or cars. More money in, more money out. It's kind of a calculation. The first thing my agent told me, "Never mention the word art?that you made art movies?because art doesn't make money. You have to say
Ace Ventura: Pet Detective and the dollars will appear in their eyes." It was true.
Tell me about Lars [whom Kier met when his own short film The Last Trip to Harrisburg shared a bill with The Element of Crime at a film festival in Mannheim]. 
When I saw
Element of Crime, I could not get out of my seat. I said to the directors, especially the Americans, we can't go home because whoever made that film will get the first prize. And he did. I expected someone like Kubrick or Fassbinder dressed in black. Bad mood. Then here comes this student-looking young man. It was arranged so we had a beer and talked. I found a distributor for the film. He went back and about two months later I got a call from him. "Don't shave anymore. Don't wash your hair. Come here in three weeks. I have to sell you as the king of the Viking army, the husband of Medea."
That was our first work, his then-wife was pregnant. Tomorrow night, his daughter is visiting me and she is 23. Always he says to people: don't act. I was cast as the king, and behind me was a line of all the actors from the royal theater playing all the old kings and I was the new king and someone says, "Jason!" and I turn around and look, and Lars said: "Stop! Stop! I forgot we had a star. Don't act. I have you a horse, a symbol of masculinity, I gave you two big dogs, you are wearing an iron shirt. Please don't act. Just be a tired king." That's the only thing he ever said in 22 years. Now when I get the script, basically it?s always written for me. Like the new one where I play a wedding planner.
Why I am not in bigger parts, his new films take place in America and I am not an American. In
Dogville, I had to say "The boss wants to tawk to ya." You concentrate more on your accent than being there. I don't care how big the roles are with him. I think for an actor, the biggest compliment is if
Variety writes more about you than you have text in the film. In
Breaking the Waves, Emily says, "What do you want?" I say, "I want that you fuck the sailor and I watch." That's all I say in the whole film. When the film was in Cannes, and there was the press conference, people said, "You are so evil." I said, no, you are evil. You have an evil fantasy because you don't see me doing anything to her. You see the knife, but you don't see me killing her. But in your fantasy, you wanted me to kill her.
Posted by ahillis at July 30, 2011 5:00 AM
Congrats to the non-royal royals! They look happy and the queen looks sweet.
I like Wills & Kate for kind of being low-key and not taking attention away from the bride & groom.
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