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.

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.

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

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.

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 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.

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.