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.

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

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.

Audition is the worst thing. It's like cleaning furniture in a department store.

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.

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.

There are certain people who I worked with, Pamela Anderson, Arnold Schwarzenegger, they are figures. And they know this. They don't pretend to be good actors. They were made by the industry into figures.