Lars Eidinger thought he’d be a vampire in The Blood Countess.
The film stars Isabelle Huppert and directed by celebrated German filmmaker Ulrike Ottinger.
Lars spoke about his wish to play a vampire during a press conference for the movie at the Berlin Film Festival hours before its world premiere.
He shared that when Ottinger brought the offer to him, he assumed that he’d play a vampire, but the director had something else in mind.
“She asked me if I wanted to be in her next movie — a vampire movie — and I thought, yeah, that’s great. I expected to be a vampire. Then they sent me the script and it turned out that I’m the therapist of the vampire!” he joked.
The Blood Countess remimagines infamous Hungarian serial killer Elizabeth Báthory in modern-day Vienna.
“She reunites with her devoted underling, Hermine, to track down a dangerous book with the power to destroy all evil — including all vampires such as themselves,” the film’s synopsis reads.
“It doesn’t happen to me often, but I always wanted to be the vampire and not the therapist — and especially the part that Thomas is playing is so wonderful, the vegetarian vampire,” Eidinger continued.
“I wanted to be the vegetarian vampire! Maybe that gives the character [of the therapist] something philosophical, that he wants to be somebody else. I don’t know,” he joked.
During the same interview, Huppert gushed over starring in the film, saying, “The main reason and source of immense pleasure — to do this thing, to be with everybody here in this room and at this table, and with Ulrike, because Ulrike is a very special person, a woman director — maybe she’s even more than a director. She’s a visionary, and this is what cinema requires, and this is what you can get from cinema on the best occasions.”
