Top 112 Quotes & Sayings by Udo Kier - Page 2

When I have a part that isn't the leading part, I want to act in a way that people remember. Otherwise, what is the point?

I collect furniture and modern art. And I never go to any parties. I rather prefer to go around in nature.

I don't consider myself funny.

Gus van Sant I met at the Berlin film festival, and he came up to me. He had a little film in the festival called 'Mala Noche' that he had made for $20,000. He said: 'You are one of my favourite actors. I'm doing 'My Own Private Idaho' with River Phoenix and Keanu Reeves. You should be in it!' Then I started working with Gus.

Anybody can act.

As an actor it gets boring to play always the villain.

I'm a very quiet person actually.

I've made over 220 films. Of these 220 films, 100 films are not good, 50 are okay, and 50 are very good.

I've done more than 65 films. I don't count them anymore. The first 10 you count and then you stop.

All of these great directors I've worked with, they've all come to me. I never go after it.

I don't like to work with directors who have taken an adoption from another script writer, because it's too much: one of them writes it and then has to explain it to the other, or maybe the director sees it in a way the writer doesn't want it.

I'm very laid-back, and I meet people just by accident - never through agencies or anything like that. I met Paul Morrissey, who directed me in 'Dracula' and 'Frankenstein,' on a plane from Rome to Munich. He asked for my telephone number and wrote it in his passport.

There are many things, as an actor, where you find that a production just wants you for your name. I am not a big, big, big name, but maybe they can sell the movie if I am in it. This I don't like.

In America as a foreign actor it's very difficult to get into main roles.

People often say to me, especially people from the press: 'Oh, you are so evil.' But I'm a gardener. I rescue animals in Palm Springs where I live.

In my real life I'm a very normal person.

I never wanted to be an actor. I just wanted to learn languages and travel and see the world.

I mean, if you are director like Lars Von Trier who is able to get actors on a table like Lauren Bacall, Ben Gazzara, James Caan, Nicole Kidman, Chloe Sevigny, Stellan Skarsgard, Udo Kier, all in the self-service situation in the same room, the same trailer, no money, then you must have something that everybody accepts.

Sometimes, you can also have a big impact in a film just by doing something unexpected.

I'm not very career-driven, never was.

When you don't have a family, you create one.

I'm drawn to people who are free in their way of making films.

You know, I don't want to waste my time by being in a movie where nobody remembers my part. That's not interesting at all!

In Hollywood, they make movies like they make washing machines. It's a business. In Europe, the films are considered art. No producer would ever tell a director where to cut a film or how to re-write the script. I love Hollywood, but all of the time I have to go back to Europe.

I like Palm Springs because of the sunshine. It's a little city surrounded by mountains.

When you get older time moves faster - much faster.

I have a ranch and when I sit there and see a little lizard and birds, I really love what I see and I'm love with nature.

I like Prague, it's strange. All the houses you see look like Disney sets, with their bright colours.

The best compliment for a director is that an audience hates their films.

If everybody would love each other, there would be no war.

I'm very lucky to say that I worked with a lot of directors who cannot make a bad film. Like when Wim Wenders, they cannot make a bad film. They can make a film people don't like, or it's the wrong moment.

The interesting part about 'Iron Sky' was crowdfunding. It was financed in a very special new way. Timo Vuorensola is an amazing, concentrated person who was able to make this comedy. When I saw the film for the first time, I liked it very much.

Warhol took outcasts and made them into stars. There will never be another artist like him.

I'm a totally desert person.

I have no time for real horses, so I have a plastic horse. Large size. Called Max Von Sydow. For photographs it looks real. If I do a photo shoot and it stands in the background, you think it's a horse. A horse is a horse.

I was in 'Iron Sky,' the first one, and I liked it very much. I liked the technology being used. The technology has such power.

I always wanted to make music but I cannot play any instrument.

I love the smell of the Earth. I'm a good cook my friends say. I love cooking for my friends. So I'm totally the opposite of being evil. I think only if you're a good person can you be very evil onscreen.

I get nervous when I'm sitting in an airplane at 10,000 feet and then the sign comes on: 'Please fasten your seatbelt for turbulence.'

It is fun to play evil parts... especially vampires.

I tried all my life to be a normal person. Stars are in the sky. I like cooking and gardening.

The vampire or the bad guy, that's what people do remember. Lars von Trier, like Guy Maddin, their films are made for a group of exclusive people who like special films. And they are special films, they are art films. And I started with commercial films at the beginning, and later on, because you know, when you are an actor, you have the same cliché like everybody else, you want to be in big films, you want to be known and all that.

I like torture. Torture is photogenic. If you make horror movies, you always have to think what's photogenic and what's not. If you stay home with the candlelight and you read a book, Rilke, or whatever, or Sigmund Freud, it's boring. But if you watch Udo Kier in a horror film and people are hunting me and trying to kill me, and there's my love interest with big breasts and beautiful hair, and I believe in her and they kill me at the end, that's more interesting. We're talking about films here. We're not talking about writing stories.

People never understand what a friendship is. I'll tell you what a friendship is to me. Friendship to me is, if my friends need my little finger to live, I'm going to have it cut off. I'm going to the hospital, they cut off my finger, and maybe I have a gold finger instead, and I become famous. But I still give it to my friend.

Now the time comes that I decided I only will do art films, basically. In a way, very similar to Isabella Rossellini. I prefer to work only with people like Lars von Trier or Guy Maddin or Gus Van Sant, just to name a few. But also there's bills to pay, and sometimes you have to make a movie. So my decision from now on is art movies, or movies which are commercial, but for real money. That is my decision.

I'm not an ensemble actor, because it's always a lot of ego when you're all together in the scene. It's kind of intellectual fighting for something.

If you go into a forest of film stories, you never can get right through the forest straight ahead; you always have to make some U-turns or whatever, because there's some trees in the way. And that's what I'm doing. Sometimes, as an actor, if you make only these intellectual, wonderful films, which I love, from time to time you have to make a film like Armageddon so people see that you're still around.

The Bible is wonderful. It's only one book, but you can put two grams of coke on top of the Bible, and you first take a line of coke and then you open the Bible. Because then you understand.

I learned something, when you have Nazi uniform on, why people were so evil and used their power. Because it's a very powerful uniform, it's like boots and black and silver and skeletons everywhere, on your hat, on your shoulder.

When you start in movie business... It is a business, actually. Nothing to do with art. Picasso is art, and Giacometti, but film acting is no art. Just the luck of being discovered, maybe.

Werner Herzog, I knew him for so many years, when Fassbinder was at his highest moment. But we had a rule: An actor from Fassbinder could never work with an actor of Werner Herzog or Wim Wenders. Because if we would have done that, we would have been spies. "Ah, you worked with Werner - how was it? How did he direct you?" I was Fassbinder's actor.

The actor's always as good as the stories are. And so many important things, there is the light, there is the costumes, the makeup, there's the text, there's so many elements which the actor himself cannot control. But the script is the most important thing. First of all the story, and then you go from there. You know, it's like you stand in the kitchen, and say are we making a fish or do we grill a steak? And you go from there.