Actor was so 'diabolical' that his own director plotted to burn him to death in bed

The feud between actor and director once grew so large that they actually tried to kill each other while working together.

You've probably heard the name Werner Herzog, and even if it's only from his more recent appearances in The Mandalorian you've likely seen him on your screen at some point.

That's probably not what he'd be best remembered for given that Herzog has had a long and decorated career as a filmmaker, and one of the documentaries he directed actually focused on his own relationship with one of the actors he worked with the most.

That doc would be My Best Fiend and the actor in question would be Klaus Kinski, who starred in five of Herzog's films and had what is safe to say was a somewhat fraught relationship with his director at times.

Klaus Kinski was a volatile actor known for his violent outbursts, including the time he shot a colleague's finger off. (Jean-Pierre Fizet/Sygma/Sygma/Getty Images)

"He wasn't quite normal, aggressive. His character was diabolical," so went Herzog's narration about Kinski to the trailer of My Best Fiend.

"Together we were like two critical masses which made for a dangerous combination when coming in contact."

Herzog and Kinski certainly were a dangerous combination, as when the director was at the 1999 Cannes Film Festival where his documentary was screened he said he planned to murder the actor.

Planning to set fire to Kinski's house, Herzog was stopped when he was attacked by the actor's dog, and it sounds as though Kinski felt much the same way.

"We had a great love, a great bond, but both of us planned to murder each other," Herzog said at the time.

"Klaus was one of the greatest actors of the century, but he was also a monster and a great pestilence."

Herzog said he once tried to burn Kinski's home down, and other people offered to kill the actor for him. (Michael Tullberg/Getty Images)

During production on 1972 movie Aguirre, The Wrath of God, in which Kinski had been cast after screaming down the phone at Herzog at three in the morning, things were incredibly volatile.

On one occasion the actor fired three three times at a hut where cast and crew were playing cards, blowing one extra's finger off.

On another occasion Herzog refused to fire a member of the crew, prompting Kinski to threaten to walk off production.

He was only stopped by Herzog threatening to shoot his actor and then turn the gun on himself, a threat he apparently took seriously as he behaved himself more for the rest of filming.

In the documentary Herzog said that during production for the 1982 movie Fitzcarraldo, the fourth of his collaborations with Kinski, the director said the chief of some of the natives in Peru working as extras on the movie made an serious offer to kill Kinski for Herzog, the director declined.

Kinski's daughters said he sexually abused them. (Ulf Andersen/Getty Images)

Kinski, who died in 1991, had in 1980 been offered the role of one of the major villains in Raiders of the Lost Ark, but said the movie script was a 'yawn-making, boring pile of s**t' and that the film sounded 'moronically s**tty'.

In 2013, long after Kinski's death, his daughter Pola published an autobiography where she claimed her father had sexually abused her between the ages of five and 19.

Pola said that her father raped her for years and her half-sister Nastassja supported her claims, adding that he also held her 'in a sexual manner' when she was between four and five years old.