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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.