Since being plucked from obscurity in the early 1970s by Factory filmmaker Paul Morrissey to star in a pair of avant garde monster flicks, German actor Udo Kier has evolved into a full-fledged cult icon. Oscillating comfortably between the art house and grindhouse, Kier's hypnotic and menacing ice-blue gaze has peered out from the dark corners of a vast number of low-budget horror films, countless indies -- including several by longtime friend and collaborator Lars von Trier -- and even the occasional Hollywood blockbuster. His current output is no exception: In the so-bad-it's-amazing Christmas Eve slasher Fall Down Dead, Kier plays The Picasso Killer, for whom murder is delicious kunst. (It just had a blink-and-you-missed-it theatrical run, but several high-visibility L.A. billboards suggests a The Room - style afterlife might await it.) He follows that with a turn as a non-murderous acting teacher in Werner Herzog's true-crime drama, My Son My Son What Have Ye Done. We spoke with the actor about everything from playing the original sparklepire, to his infamous collaborations with people like Andy Warhol and Madonna, to the true, gardening- and cooking-loving Udo the public rarely gets to see.
Where do you call home?
I live in Los Angeles and I bought a former library in Palm Springs and I'm turning it into my house. That's where I am now.
A public library?
It was a public library, yes, built by John Porter Clark, who was one of the famous Palm Springs architects, together with Albert Frey. I'm going to make a sculpture garden, because I have a lot of very talented artist friends in Europe. So that's what I'm doing at the moment when I'm not filming.
Your next movie is Werner Herzog's My Son, My Son What Have Ye Done.
That's correct. I haven't seen it, but I heard it's a very good movie, and got a very good response. I knew Chloë Sevigny -- I had worked with her on a Lars von Trier film -- and Willem Dafoe, who I'd worked with on Shadow of the Vampire and another Lars von Trier film. I had a really good time working on that film.
Describe your character.
It's a true story about actors. We're doing a Greek play, I'm the teacher, and Michael Shannon and Chloë Sevigny are my favorite students. It happened at the end of the '70s.
Are you a menacing drama teacher?
No, I play a straight part for a change -- just a teacher and a friend. It's really ensemble work between four actors.
Did you see Fall Down Dead?
I haven't seen it. I have a collection of modern art since I'm 20, which started in Germany with [pieces by] Magritte and Giacometti. So I was interested in doing a role called The Picasso Killer who murders in the style of abstract paintings. Also, it was a vicious part, which is always very interesting to play.
What is it about the darker roles that draws you to them again and again?
You should ask the people who cast. It's not my decision. Many, many years ago, in 1973, I met Paul Morrissey in an airplane, and he cast me as Frankenstein and Dracula. Before that I could never imagine playing Dracula, but I did, and the film was successful. Since then I've always just been cast in those kinds of roles -- in Blade, or what have you, always playing the evil roles. It's more juicy than playing a good guy.
In Blood For Dracula, you play a very pretty vampire. The opening credits sequence even features you applying makeup in front of a mirror. It struck me that this was very ahead of its time, when you look at the pretty-boy vampire craze gripping Hollywood lately.
That scene you mentioned was actually Andy Warhol's idea, which goes very much to his silkscreens. It was very similar to that. Just yesterday, I did an interview about vampires, and to be honest, in the vampires of that period -- that was 1973 -- improvisation was high, and the budgets were very low. It was more fun. Today when you see a vampire movie, it is all technology and animals flying through the air and they become human. For my taste, it's too much technology and it's not scary at all. I prefer the films when we improvised, and the blood was ketchup or punch fed through tubes.
Have you seen Twilight or New Moon?
I saw just the trailers. I understand the success of the films, of course, because they are very good-looking people, young people, and they have a young audience. The world situation at the moment is very bad, and people in crisis situations are always looking for idols. So you had James Dean, now you have the vampire stuff. I have nothing against it, and I'm very happy the film is successful and the industry is being supported by films like that. There's always two things -- the art films, like my next film with [My Winnipeg director] Guy Maddin shooting in Canada -- and commercial films. I like to be in both.
Your former collaborator Andy Warhol had a genius for combining the two.
Andy Warhol, speaking now purely as a filmmaker, was a revolution in filmmaking. The real Andy Warhol films were basically the art films -- like Empire and Henry Geldzahler smoking a cigar -- those were basically the Warhol films. But films like Trash and Flash, Dracula and Frankenstein were films directed by Paul Morrissey. The thing is, he not only invented the expression, "In the future, everybody will be famous for 15 minutes," but he brought beautiful people from the street. Transvestites or whoever wanted to be in movies just knocked at his door, and if they had personality they were in his films. It's such a different period.
Who discovered Joe Dallesandro?
I think Paul Morrissey discovered him.
What were your memories of working with him?
At that time I was very connected to modern art, so I saw Trash and Flash, which were very cleverly marketed in Europe, because they could get away with much more under the auspices of art. You could even get away with an erection on screen. I had seen the films, and he presented at that time, me not knowing America very well, a very typical American college boy or man. You know -- the typical American type. I was so busy with being the vampire, and he was totally the opposite of myself.
Do you think he was fully aware of how he was being portrayed? Was he in control of his image at all?
Do you think everybody who is a sex symbol knows how to use it? [Laughs] I guess he knew very well what he was doing. I wouldn't say he was "used," but I'm sure he was aware of what they wanted him to present.
Speaking of sex, a whole generation came to know you through your involvement in the Madonna Sex book, and in the video for "Deeper and Deeper." How did that come about?
Well, Madonna had seen My Own Private Idaho, and I was in New York. It was very secret. My agent told me that Steven Meisel wanted to see me and it's for a book, and the rumor was it had something to do with Madonna. So I went there, and met Madonna, and she asked me if I'd like to do photographs for her book, and I said yes. And so we did a section in a tuxedo, and I went back to L.A., and I got a call asking me if I'd be up for some hardcore, and I said yes, of course, any time with Madonna. And so that was the book. Later on, I got a call from her people saying they're doing a black and white video for "Deeper and Deeper" and she wanted me to play a role. I like people who are ... I use the word zeitgeist -- setting trends. I admire Madonna that she is still doing what she's doing.
Do you find people just assume you're into fetishes and fringe sex acts, and is that actually the case?
That's why it all works. In my private life I'm totally the opposite of what I present on screen. I like gardening, I love to plant trees and see them growing, I rescue dogs -- I have three dogs -- and I like to cook for friends. For real friends, and I don't have that many, so I don't cook that often. So I'm totally the opposite. When I'm doing things like sex books, or playing a vampire, it's like fun for me. I have fun and let it out, then go back to my gardening and do that. As I always say, to be the devil you have to be the angel -- otherwise it doesn't work. Of course going back, the devil was an angel who got bored of being an angel.
I think that's why I have so much fun with it, because evil has no limits. I'm writing now a new film, which I will do next year, which is about a vampire who bites beautiful women in their legs. Because I'm tired of this vampire cliché where there's blood on their neck and they fall back and two little marks are revealed. So I bite women in the legs, until the end when I get to a beautiful woman and she has a wooden leg, and I bite her in the leg and my teeth get stuck in the leg. I mean, come on! You have to have fun with it.
Do you have a title for it?
Don't Bite in Wood or something like that. I have no idea. I will come up with something because I think I want to do this, I'm told people want to produce it. It's a combination of Dracula and the Werewolf, because I'll have to be on all fours going down and waiting at the corner for some beautiful prostitute to bite in the leg.
So you've found a way to combine werewolves and vampires into one monster!
Exactly. And maybe Dr. Frankenstein is in the castle or laboratory watching CNN, and seeing the new attack of Dracula biting into a woman's leg.
And maybe the wooden leg goes through your heart and kills you!
Well, maybe she fights me off like that. I haven't gotten that far yet. I think the plot is, biting the wooden leg, and he gets stuck.
Sounds good, I'm there.
There you have it. I think films should have much more sense of humor, and a wonderful sense, not calculated. When a film has a calculated sense of humor it never works. Not for me -- maybe it works for someone who works in a field all day long.
Fall Down Dead was one of David Carradine's last movies.
Yes.
Were you close?
I never even saw him on that shoot. All our scenes were shot separately.
Had you worked together before?
I worked with him after! I made a film which hasn't come out yet called Night of the Templar. We even had a sword fight together. As a person -- and I'm not just saying this because he's dead -- he was a really wonderful person. We had wonderful conversation, and he was very funny. If you don't have a sense of humor, you're lost.
Was his death a surprise to you?
Death is never a surprise. We're artists and actors, living in a very strange environment. You're confronted all the time with very strange things. Technology is advancing; for example, I'm on Facebook -- it's not me. I'm on Twitter -- it's not me. I'm everywhere, but it's not me. What can you do, we're living in a very fast world. I never knew how he really did die. There were so many rumors. I just can say that he was a nice guy, and when people die, you just never know.
So how do your fans find the real Udo on Twitter or Facebook?
They don't, because I'm not there. It's other people pretending to be me, so it's very weird. From time to time I have to call my lawyer, if they get too feisty. But I'm going to make a little film very soon, a 3-minute horror film in the bathroom with a lot of blood and maybe with a sex doll from the store, and I'm going to put it everywhere online as a thank-you to my fans. I'm going to go crazy with a rubber doll and a few buckets of blood, because it's time to say thank you for 40 years.