Diane Kruger

“So this one is Easy Rider, Dennis Hopper. My very first movie was with Dennis Hopper, he played my dad. I was still in drama school when we made this film. Not a very good film, but I was so incredibly impressed by him, and he really taught me all the basics of being an actress, like: if you don’t see the camera, the camera can’t see you, which seems pretty obvious, but it wasn’t so much to me. Obviously, I had seen this film before I met him, but I always like to watch it.”

“Oh, yeah, this is cool. Fish Tank, Andrea Arnold, and I love her personally. She’s a really great lady and wonderfully out there and crazy and creative. And Fish Tank really touched me. Her voice and her… The way she looks at things and she observes things is so interesting, and she’s such a great female filmmaker, so Fish Tank is the shit.”

“And of course, Crash. I am the most unconditional David Cronenberg fan. The very first film that I had seen of his was The Fly. I was very little. It screwed me up for life. And then Crash is something that I discovered later. You know, it is very rare, I think, to have a director who builds a body of pictures that are so diverse, but yet have that very specific tone and you know exactly what movie you’re watching, what filmmaker made that film. And his movies are so layered.”

“So this is In the Mood for Love by Wong Kar Wai. I just remember being completely transformed, not just by the beautiful images, but the beauty of storytelling through camera, the quietness of his camera. It taught me a lot about, inspired me a lot about what an actor can convey through nothing, through the eyes. And I’m just a huge fan of Wong Kar Wai and his films, so, yes.”

“The first one that I loved was this one: Dietrich & Von Sternberg in Hollywood. So Marlene Dietrich I have a very special connection to, because I’m German, and when I grew up in Germany, I remember my grandfather being very upset when my grandmother would want to show me pictures– movies of Marlene Dietrich, like, “Don’t watch this. Don’t get The Kid to watch it.” And so, of course, I wanted to watch it even more and more and more and I fell in love with her.”