San Francisco Bay Guardian
Posted in Interviews with Udo Kier on September 19th, 2005CATAPULTED to European stardom in the 1960s thanks to his heartbreakingly good looks (imagine a male Elizabeth Taylor), German actor Udo Kier has been immortalized by artists such as David Hockney and Robert Mapplethorpe and has worked with a pantheon of film auteurs: Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Dario Argento, Paul Morrissey, and Gus Van Sant, to name a few. He has appeared in nearly all of Lars von Trier’s films, including the new Kingdom, part 2, in which he alternately plays a woebegone ghost-child and a malevolent ghost-father. When he isn’t on location, Kier putters around his L.A. home with his dog, Kimba, collects modern art, directs and produces films, sings when inspired, and does interviews when called.
Bay Guardian: When we saw your character in Kingdom I, he was just in the process of being born.
Udo Kier: Yes, it was quite a Sigmund Freud moment of being in this dark, dark hole, this stomach model. I was, for a few days, a little bit disturbed. All of a sudden you’re going back in time to being a little baby. Quite strange. It was perhaps one of the most difficult roles of my life because for three weeks I had to shoot only my head on all kinds of models. I had to learn Danish, which is a very difficult language. And I had to cry all the time, and for real because Lars von Trier wouldn’t allow me to use eyedrops.
BG: From an actor’s point of view how do, say, von Trier and Fassbinder compare to Van Sant and Argento?
UK: With Gus Van Sant, there was a lot of improvisation. With Lars, you can’t change one word, because he has everything planned in his head. Fassbinder was pretty similar to Lars, and Dario likes craziness, as you can see in his movies, and he likes it when the actors offer something. And as an actor, of course, I like to come up with things.
BG: I’ve read that you starved yourself for Andy Warhol’s Dracula.
UK: I had just finished Frankenstein, and I was very sad. So on my last day I went to the cantina and had a bottle of white wine. Paul Morrissey came in and said, “Well, it looks like we have a German Dracula.” I said, “Who?” He said, “You. But you have to lose 10 pounds over the weekend.” So I didn’t eat anymore and just had water. That’s why in Dracula I had to sit in a wheelchair. I had no more power. I was sweating all over because I had to wear that fur coat, and it was so heavy and I was so weak that I could hardly walk.
BG: I love the scene with Joe Dallesandro where you topple out of your wheelchair and have to crawl up the stairs.
UK: Yes, I was crawling all the time. Paul said, “Oh, that’s good. Crawl up the stairs.” You know how sadistic directors are. “Did it hurt you? Yes? Good.” But it was fun, and it started everything off, because Andy Warhol was very big then. All of a sudden I was in Vogue magazine. All of a sudden I was bumped up to first class, and you know how that is. You become like a little baby.
BG: How did you and Fassbinder hook up?
UK: We were both working-class boys, and we met when he was 15 and I was 16. He always … you know, he looked how he looked. And I was a very good-looking boy, so we found a match. He knew that if he hung out with me, he would meet lots of nice people. Then much later I was in London and opened Stern magazine and saw this article about a genius named Fassbinder, and I said, “Oh my God, I know him.” So I went to Munich to see him. He offered me a film, but he was not very friendly at first. Later he explained that he didn’t want to be reminded, through me, of that time in his life. And I understood why, because it was not a very good time in Germany.
BG: Jumping to more recent history, was it fun working with Madonna [on Sex] and Pamela Anderson Lee [in Barb Wire]?
UK: Yes, I like these blond created people. Brigitte Bardot was a creation; Marilyn Monroe was a creation. All sex symbols are creations.
BG: Living in L.A., you must encounter creations on a daily basis.
UK: I tell you, I live in a gang neighborhood where on Fridays you hear gunshots. And my friends from Europe say, “Oh! Fireworks!” I say, “Those aren’t fireworks; somebody just got killed, and soon we will have the helicopters here, and platoons, and the apocalypse.” I tell them that I will give them a Vietnam dinner, because of the helicopters, and the bamboo in front of my house.
BG: Do you like Hollywood?
UK: Yes, I love the palm trees. It’s like postcard reality. Look, I see something in the air now [sound of distant engines]. It’s planes and a sign that says Armageddon. Each plane has one letter. I was just telling you about it, and now here it comes. My God, how spiritual.
May 27, 1998 By Neva Chonin
