Biography

Director. Writer. Producer. Actor. Poet. He studied history, literature and theatre for some time, but didn't finish it and founded instead his own film production company in 1963. Later in his life, Herzog also staged several operas in Bayreuth, Germany, and at the Milan Scala in Italy. Herzog has won numerous national and international awards for his poetic feature and documentary films.

- IMDb Mini Biography By: Oliver Heidelbach

His films contain animals doing unusual things

Frequently worked with Klaus Kinski

Driven protagonists who often seem to be on the brink of madness

His films often show archive footage from various sources

Deep smooth voice

Herzog is admired for being the only director who was able to work with the late and very eccentric Klaus Kinski.

In 1961, he worked nights in a steel factory to raise money for his films. In 1966, he was employed by the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

Has three children from three women: Rudolph Herzog (born in 1973), Hanna Mattes (born in 1980), and Simon Herzog (born in 1989).

Was voted the 35th Greatest Director of all time by Entertainment Weekly.

Biography in: John Wakeman, editor. "World Film Directors, Volume Two, 1945- 1985". Pages 422-429. New York: The H.W. Wilson Company, 1988.

Joaquin Phoenix was in a car accident on a winding canyon road where his vehicle flipped over. Shaken and confused, he heard a tapping on his window and a voice said, "Just relax." Unable to see the man, Phoenix replied, "I'm fine. I am relaxed." When he managed to see the man, he realized it was Werner Herzog, who then replied, "No, you're not." After helping Phoenix out of the wreckage, Herzog phoned for an ambulance, then vanished.

Herzog claims in a 2006 Bloomberg interview that he had the chance to direct both Brokeback Mountain (2005) and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975).

Lives in Los Angeles.

Studied at the University of Munich and later earned a scholarship to Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, but dropped out after only a few days.

Has a sister, Sigrid, and two brothers, Tilbert and producer Lucki Stipetic.

Mother, Elisabeth, and father, Dietrich, were biologists.

When he first took an IQ test as a young boy, he scored 124. He re-took the test years later and scored an average 101.

Frequently directs operas on stage, but never on film, and finds the two forms fundamentally incompatible.

His documentary entitled From One Second to the Next (2013), which explores the consequences of texting while driving, had its premiere August 8, 2013 in Los Angeles. It was sponsored by several major mobile phone companies.

He was invited to receive an honorary doctorate from Cambridge. He refused it, however, believing he was not the type of man to achieve this level of respectability.

In 1968, Signs of Life (1968) won the German Film Prize and a Silver Bear as Best Debut Film at the Berlinale. The following year, Herzog organized a free alternative to the Berlinale in Wedding, a working-class district of Berlin, showing festival films at no charge for people who wouldn't ordinarily encounter independent and off-beat movies such as his own.

According to film critic Roger Ebert, 'even his failures are spectacular.'.

Writes his screenplays in 4-5 days.

François Truffaut once called him 'the most important film director alive.'.

Despite a history of difficult film productions, he is proud of the fact that his films have never gone over budget.

Doesn't use and dislikes the use of storyboards.

He didn't attend film school.

Admits to being fascinated by professional wrestling.

TV uses landscapes. I transform landscapes - I direct landscapes.

[on working with Klaus Kinski] I had to domesticate the wild beast.

So, you have to be daring to do things like this, because the world is not easily accepting of filmmaking. There will always be some sort of an obstacle, and the worst of all obstacles is the spirit of bureaucracy. You have to find your way to battle bureaucracy. You have to outsmart it, to outgut it, to outnumber it, to outfilm them - that's what you have to do.

[During the making of Fitzcarraldo (1982)] I shouldn't make movies anymore. I should go to a lunatic asylum.

If I had to climb into hell and wrestle the devil himself for one of my films, I would do it.

Through invention, through imagination, through fabrication, I become more truthful than the little bureaucrats.

I despise formal restaurants. I find all of that formality to be very base and vile. I would much rather eat potato chips on the sidewalk.

Actually, for some time now I have given some thought to opening a film school. But if I did start one up you would only be allowed to fill out an application form after you have walked alone on foot, let's say from Madrid to Kiev, a distance of about five thousand kilometres. While walking, write. Write about your experiences and give me your notebooks. I would be able to tell who had really walked the distance and who had not. While you are walking you would learn much more about filmmaking and what it truly involves than you ever would sitting in a classroom. During your voyage you will learn more about what your future holds than in five years at film school. Your experiences would be the very opposite of academic knowledge, for academia is the death of cinema. It is the very opposite of passion.

Everyone who makes films has to be an athlete to a certain degree because cinema does not come from abstract academic thinking; it comes from your knees and thighs.

Someone like Jean-Luc Godard is for me intellectual counterfeit money when compared to a good Kung Fu film.

I invite any sort of myths [about myself] because I like the stooges and doppelgangers and doubles out there. I feel protected behind all these things. Let them blossom! I do not plant them, I do not throw out the seeds. I advise you to read Herzog on Herzog because there you see a few clarifications.

To me, adventure is a concept that applies only to those men and women of earlier historical times, like the medieval knights who traveled into the unknown. The concept has degenerated constantly since then... I absolutely loathe adventurers, and I particularly hate this old pseudo-adventurism where the mountain climb becomes about confronting the extremes of humanity.

[on Klaus Kinski] People think we had a love-hate relationship. Well, I did not love him, nor did I hate him. We had mutual respect for each other, even as we both planned each other's murder.

Our children will hate us for not throwing hand grenades into every TV station because of commercials.

You leave this jungle now and you'll find eight bullets in you and the ninth one will be for me. [to Klaus Kinski on the set of Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972)].

I'm not out to win prizes - that's for dogs and horses.

I don't spend sleepless nights over getting very bad reviews.

[on threatening to shoot Klaus Kinski on Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972)] Yes, I did that. I said to him that there was a line that neither he nor I could cross; we had a higher duty than ourselves. I told him it was impermissible for him to walk away. I explained to him calmly that he would not survive if he tried. I had a rifle - not in my hands - and I told him I would shoot him. He understood this was not a joke. He screamed for the police. The nearest police station was 40km away. And for $20 flat they would have testified to it being a hunting accident.

[on Bruno S. in the film The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (1974)] I instantly knew he could be the leading character in "Kaspar Hauser".

I'm not an interviewer. I have conversations. And I know the heart of men. I know it because I have had fundamental experiences like traveling on foot. The world reveals itself to those who travel on foot. You're unprotected and have to talk to people to ask them to fill your canister because there's no creek for dozens of miles. You really learn what men are all about.

[his first interview question to death-row inmates] Your crime is abominable and monstrous, but I will treat you as a human being.

Never show anything to anyone in a documentary. They will become self-conscious and freak out. The will think, 'Oh, the light on me was bad', or 'My hairdo wasn't good enough', and 'My God, I spoke too fast'. Never, never, ever, ever do that.

There are billions of people who have cellphones. All of them can shoot a movie on it, if you want to do that. The Internet is spread out into everywhere, so you have to find your own means, your new outlets, for distribution.

[on Nastassja Kinski] To understand Nastassja, you must look at her parents. Her mother is a poet, her father was possessed.

Day one is the point of no return.

There is nothing wrong with spending a night in jail if it means getting the shot you need.

[why he has never taken a vacation] It would never occur to me... I work steadily and methodically, with great focus. There is never anything frantic about how I do my job; I'm no workaholic. A holiday is a necessity for someone whose work is an unchanged daily routine, but for me everything is constantly fresh and always new. I love what I do, and my life feels like one long vacation.

When I write, I sit in front of the computer and pound the keys. I start at the beginning and write fast, leaving out anything that isn't necessary, aiming at all times for the hard core of the narrative. I can't write without that urgency. Something is wrong if it takes more than five days to finish a screenplay. A story created this way will always be full of life.

I work best under pressure, knee-deep in the mud. It helps me concentrate. The truth is I have never been guided by the kind of strict discipline I see in some people, those who get up at five in the morning and jog for an hour. My priorities are elsewhere. I will rearrange my entire day to have a solid meal with friends.

Perseverance has kept me going over the years. Things rarely happen overnight. Filmmakers should be prepared for many years of hard work. The sheer toil can be healthy and exhilarating. Although for many years I lived hand to mouth - sometimes in semi-poverty - I have lived like a rich man ever since I started making films. Throughout my life I have been able to do what I truly love, which is more valuable than any cash you could throw at me. At a time when friends were establishing themselves by getting university degrees, going into business, building careers and buying houses, I was making films, investing everything back into my work. Money lost, film gained.

[on the difference of his documentary work to 'Direct Cinema'] I'm not a fly on the wall. That would be utterly boring. I'm a filmmaker. I create films. I stylize them, I narrate them, I captivate an audience, I do everything a director should do. You see, what I do has to do a lot also with some sort of cautious humor. But also the joy of creating, the joy of taking an audience along with me, left and right.[2015]

[on his big break as a filmmaker] I wrote a screenplay, "Signs of Life" [later to become his feature film debut Signs of Life (1968)], and submitted it to a competition of all German-speaking screenwriters and filmmakers. There was a cash prize with it and I submitted it under a pen name because I was already known for three short films. ... I won this award, which really carried me for quite a time. That was a very huge push.[2011]

[on getting Klaus Kinski back to work] In Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972), at the end, ten days before the end of shooting, Kinski, I believe as usual, didn't learn his lines. They were very short lines anyway, and he all of a sudden interrupts everything and throws everything around and he screams in a tantrum and destroys half the set and screams that the still photographer had smiled and had to be dismissed on the spot. Of course I wouldn't dismiss him because everyone else would have walked out in solidarity. I said "No, I'm not doing it, let's calm down and we'll continue." And he left the set. And I knew why he had done it because he had done it 35 times just within the last five years. And because of that, movies were canceled and destroyed. It was too well documented. He packed his things into a speedboat and screamed and screamed. And it was somehow not correctly reported in the press, but I have witnesses that I was unarmed, and did not point a gun at him, but I walked up and I said to him, "Klaus, I don't have to make up my mind. I've had months of deliberating where is the borderline that we will not transgress. This would be the transgression, the borderline. This is something that you will not survive." I said to him, "I do have a rifle," very calmly. He could try to take the boat and he might reach the next bend of the river but he would have eight bullets through his head. But of course there were nine bullets, and I said, "Guess who gets the last one?" And he looked at me and he understood it was not a joke anymore. I would have done it. He understood he better behave, and it was kind of hostile for the next couple of days. But what I'm trying to say is, the incident may sound funny now, and it seems funny and bizarre to me; if I sat out there I would laugh with you. But what I'm trying to say is that there's always been a very clear borderline, a line that must not be stepped over. So once you accept the duty you have to understand the duty that is upon you.[2005]

[on doing Fitzcarraldo (1982) without special effects] It was disgusting actually because at that time 20th Century Fox was interested to produce a film and we had a very brief conversation of about five sentences because it was clear their position was, "You have to do it with a miniature boat." From there on it was clear no one in the industry would ever support something like that. It was really risky, and I knew, at that moment, I was alone with it. I tried to explain that I wanted to have the audience know that at the most fundamental level it was real. Today when you see mainstream movies, in many moments, even when it's not really necessary, there special effects. It's a young audience, and at six and seven kids can identify them, they know it was a digital effect, and normally they even know how they were done. But I had the feeling I wanted to put the audience back in the position where they could trust their eyes... [2005]

I like the crabs a lot {at the end of Invincible (2001)]. Actually what you see in the film was shot on Christmas Island, actually two Christmas Islands, one in the Pacific and one in the Indian Ocean west of the Australian mainland. I spent some 10 or 12 days just waiting for the crabs to arrive because there's only a very short window of opportunity during the very first days; 70 or 80 million crabs start migrating from the jungle to the beaches. They mate, lay their eggs and disappear back into the jungle. So it took quite an effort and some time to get them on film. (...) I think about them and I don't know why. I can't explain it. I know there's something very big for example, to see the crabs crossing the railroad tracks, something that I can't explain, but I know there's something big, like for example the dancing chicken at the end of Stroszek (1977). (...) It is also one of my great favorites, and that image also fell into my lap. I don't know how and why; the strange thing is that with both the crabs and the dancing chicken at the end of "Stroszek," the crew couldn't take it, they hated it, they were a loyal group and in case of "Stroszek" they hated it so badly that I had to operate the camera myself because the cinematographer who was very good and dedicated, hated it so much that he didn't want to shoot it. He said, "I've never seen anything as dumb as that." And I tried to say, "You know there's something so big about it." But they couldn't see it. (...) When you are speaking about these images, there's something bigger about them, and I keep saying that we do have to develop an adequate language for our state of civilization, and we do have to create adequate pictures - images for our civilization. If we do not do that, we die out like dinosaurs, so it's of a different magnitude, trying to do something against the wasteland of images that surround us, on television, magazines, post cards, posters in travel agencies...[2005]

[on the dangers of filming Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972) on location] You know, I've filmed in Black Africa, and during the shoot I was jailed five times in a row, I had malaria, we almost died - nothing scares me anymore, neither a jungle nor a Klaus Kinski, nor costumes, nor being with hundreds of Indians. There were in fact extraordinary difficulties, financial problems too. When you see the film, it looks as though it must have cost $2 million to make. But it cost maybe a tenth of that.[1973]

[on Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972) as a political film] [Films from Latin America are] ...highly political films, just like "Aguirre", although it takes place around 1560. And yet, as a theme, this horde of imperialistic adventurers performing a great historical failure, this failure of imperialism, of the conquerors, the theme is really quite modern. The method by which history was then made is actually one that can still be found today in many Latin American countries. History there is staged as theater, with theatrical coups. Think of the banana republics and their dictators. (...) A big panel of officials [by the Peruvian government] read the script in advance and was extraordinarily moved by the story. The Peruvians currently have a rather unusual form of state: It is a military dictatorship, but a liberal one that has nationalized certain industries-the banks and oil companies of the Americans - and [enacted] a huge land reform, with confiscations from large private owners. They noticed very clearly that my story revolves around the same problem of identity for the Peruvian people, the identity they're searching for, as well. How do you shake off the last vestiges of this imperialism, of Spanish conquest, to achieve a sense of 'Peruvianness.' And that's the theme of my film. It shows that the strong and the enduring are the Indians and their culture. (...) I'd rather show the film there than I would in Germany, because it fits there much better than it does here. Quechua, for example, is spoken in the film, and it remains in the German version too. It is a film that's largely meant for Latin America. But the topic may be of interest everywhere. It's also a film that's meant to be understood as a 'movie.' It's thrilling, it shows unusual locations and there's lots of action. (...) At any rate, it's my first film that will be more widely accepted. None of the others found a larger audience; they remained in the circles of cinephiles.[1973}

[on drugs] I simply don't like the culture of drugs. I never liked the hippies for it. I think it was a mistake to be all the time stoned and on weed. It didn't look right and it doesn't look right today either and the damage drugs have done to civilizations are too enormous. And besides, I don't need any drug to step out of myself. I don't want them and I do not need them. And you may not believe this, big-eyed as you sit here now, but I've not even taken a puff of weed in my life. (...) I just pass the joint on to the next and let them do it. It's their business. I don't want to do it. Actually, I was completely stoned once with the composer Florian Fricke of Popol Vuh. I was at his home and he had pancakes and marmalade. And I smeared the marmalade and he started chuckling and chuckling. And I ate it and it tasted very well and I wanted another one and took another good amount of the marmalade and the marmalade had weed in it. He didn't even tell me. I was so stoned that it took me an hour to find my home in Munich. I circled the block for a full hour until finding my place. So I have had the experience.[2014]

I also write, of course, a documentary, and I somehow stylize and stage them. I do it for enhancement of a deeper truth, something that is beautiful out there and something that connects us to poetry. I like to take audiences - and I'm speaking now about documentaries - I take them left and right and right into the landscape of sheer illumination and poetry. And I claim the right of trespassing if I can take you into [that] landscape... I'll do any form of trespassing easily. [2016]

I always get the very best out of actors... Including Kinski [Klaus Kinski], by the way, who did 205 shitty films, but in my films he is really magnificent. [correction: Kinski has a total of only 136 credits as an actor on IMDB, incl. TV and uncredited work]

[speaking in 2019] This century will show the bankruptcy of technological utopias. We will not colonize Mars. We will not become immortal. It's baloney. We should rather make sure that our planet, which is the only home we have, stays habitable, instead of making a completely hostile environment, like on Mars, somehow habitable.