Quotes

In Hollywood you got work around you all the time. You can't get a taxi without that the driver hands you a script. Where I live [in Sweden] people still read books that can't be made into film.

It takes a long time to make me beautiful, but it goes fast to make me ugly.

There is no overacting, only untrue acting.

I'm not religious or anything, but to me it's great fun and it's nice to have a lot of kids. They take care of each other.

[on his first time on stage] I played a heap of snow in a school play. I was under a sheet, and crawled out when spring came. I often say I'll never reach the same artistic level again.

Th main pleasure of working with Lars [von Trier] is that you feel absolutely free and safe, and you can't fail because if you fuck up it's considered good...We've matured a little, hopefully, but hopefully not too much.

[on any potential sexual awareness emanating from making "Nymphomaniac'I and II] Well, it's not only about that, but if you get a chance to learn about something that's good, isn't it? I'd never heard about the 'silent duck' before. I have a lot of female friends who consider me one of their girlfriends because they talk very openly in front of me, so I've heard quite a lot.

I was born naked and walk around naked at home. My parents walked around naked and when my friends in school still thought babies were brought by storks I could tell them how they were really made. I have a very relaxed relationship[p with my genitals.

[on Robin Williams] It was as though he had three brains going at full speed all the time.

[on shooting Return to Montauk (2017)] It won't sell a lot of popcorn, but it's right up my alley.

[on Sverrir Gudnason's diet before filming Borg vs. McEnroe (2017)] He was living on pizza and beer, basically.

[on Lars von Trier] When he started out, his first five films are overly controlled by him. Because all directors are control freaks, one way or another. They want it their way, they want to create their universe and that's a quality, but it can go too far. In his first five films that ended with Europa (1991), he was so controlling that there was not one gesture, one turn of the head that he hadn't planned, and that of course killed it. So he talks of Europa himself as a big block of ice because there's no life in it. And he realised that - that's why he took away his tools and started the Dogme movement, and then when we did Breaking the Waves (1996) he had big signs: "Make mistakes!" on the walls, and he let us do whatever we wanted. But what he gets done is life. His scripts are not realistic and his dialogue is not realistic - they're very measured - like Breaking the Waves which is a great film, but if you would have filmed it just in a conventional way, and very controlled, you would have felt the melodramatic structure of every scene. Lars is also a genuinely good man who really works hard to make everybody feel good around him. He's an extremely generous man. His way of talking is extremely brutal, but I talk the same way to him. You don't say sweet things to each other - we just offend each other, which is a sign of love.

I don't think Ingmar Bergman was a wonderful man. He was a great artist. I worked with him twice and I always kept him at a distance because I didn't want him near my life. He is a control freak, he even tried to control people's lives. He tried to control the entire film industry in Sweden. He fired and appointed bosses of theatres, television, everything – he was involved in so much. He crushed people, he destroyed people – he was not a very nice man. But a great director. It was fun working with him in the moment – in the work moment – but other than that, I felt the fear that was around him.